Nahal Norouzi – Publications
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2018 |
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 | Salam Daher; Jason Hochreiter; Nahal Norouzi; Laura Gonzalez; Gerd Bruder; Greg Welch Physical-Virtual Agents for Healthcare Simulation Proceedings Article In: Proceedings of IVA 2018, November 5-8, 2018, Sydney, NSW, Australia, ACM, 2018. @inproceedings{daher2018physical,Conventional Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) focus primarily on the visual and auditory channels for both the agent and the interacting human: the agent displays a visual appearance and speech as output, while processing the human’s verbal and non-verbal behavior as input. However, some interactions, particularly those between a patient and healthcare provider, inherently include tactile components.We introduce an Intelligent Physical-Virtual Agent (IPVA) head that occupies an appropriate physical volume; can be touched; and via human-in-the-loop control can change appearance, listen, speak, and react physiologically in response to human behavior. Compared to a traditional IVA, it provides a physical affordance, allowing for more realistic and compelling human-agent interactions. In a user study focusing on neurological assessment of a simulated patient showing stroke symptoms, we compared the IPVA head with a high-fidelity touch-aware mannequin that has a static appearance. Various measures of the human subjects indicated greater attention, affinity for, and presence with the IPVA patient, all factors that can improve healthcare training. |
 | Nahal Norouzi; Luke Bölling; Gerd Bruder; Greg Welch Augmented Rotations in Virtual Reality for Users with a Reduced Range of Head Movement Proceedings Article In: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2018), pp. 8, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-7049-1548-0. @inproceedings{Norouzi2018b,A large body of research in the field of virtual reality (VR) is focused on making user interfaces more natural and intuitive by leveraging natural body movements to explore a virtual environment. For example, head-tracked user interfaces allow users to naturally look around a virtual space by moving their head. However, such approaches may not be appropriate for users with temporary or permanent limitations of their head movement. In this paper, we present techniques that allow these users to get full-movement benefits from a reduced range of physical movements. Specifically, we describe two techniques that augment virtual rotations relative to physical movement thresholds. We describe how each of the two techniques can be implemented with either a head tracker or an eye tracker, e.g., in cases when no physical head rotations are possible. We discuss their differences and limitations and we provide guidelines for the practical use of such augmented user interfaces. |
 | Nahal Norouzi; Gerd Bruder; Greg Welch Assessing Vignetting as a Means to Reduce VR Sickness During Amplified Head Rotations Proceedings Article In: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception 2018, pp. 8, ACM 2018, ISBN: 978-1-4503-5894-1/18/08. @inproceedings{Norouzi2018,Redirected and amplified head movements have the potential to provide more natural interaction with virtual environments (VEs) than using controller-based input, which causes large discrepancies between visual and vestibular self-motion cues and leads to increased VR sickness. However, such amplified head movements may also exacerbate VR sickness symptoms over no amplification. Several general methods have been introduced to reduce VR sickness for controller-based input inside a VE, including a popular vignetting method that gradually reduces the field of view. In this paper, we investigate the use of vignetting to reduce VR sickness when using amplified head rotations instead of controller-based input. We also investigate whether the induced VR sickness is a result of the user's head acceleration or velocity by introducing two different modes of vignetting, one triggered by acceleration and the other by velocity. Our dependent measures were pre and post VR sickness questionnaires as well as estimated discomfort levels that were assessed each minute of the experiment. Our results show interesting effects between a baseline condition without vignetting, as well as the two vignetting methods, generally indicating that the vignetting methods did not succeed in reducing VR sickness for most of the participants and, instead, lead to a significant increase. We discuss the results and potential explanations of our findings. |
![[POSTER] Fear of falling and eye movement behavior in young adults and older adults during walking: A case study](https://sreal.ucf.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Thiamwong2018aa10.jpg) | Ladda Thiamwong; Nahal Norouzi; Gregory Welch [POSTER] Fear of falling and eye movement behavior in young adults and older adults during walking: A case study Proceedings Article In: 39th Annual Southern Gerontological Society Meeting, Buford, GA USA, 2018. BibTeX | Links: @inproceedings{Thiamwong2018aa, |
