Finding Hidden Objects in Large 3D Environments: The Supermarket Problem

Many everyday tasks involve searching for something,selecting, and manipulating it with some cognitivepurpose. Even if it is done in a quite automatic manner, due toour experience to deal with real objects, the mapping of theseactions to a virtual world is not trivial.In this paper we present a solution for this problem,which is composed of three parts: a semi-automatic navigationtechnique based on path-planning; a selection technique comprisingthe overexposure of nearby objects; and a manipulationtechnique based on natural gestures. These three techniqueswere combined in a smooth way to solve the searching, selectingand manipulating problem. A certain degree of parallelismbetween them was accepted and is handled by the system.We evaluate our results by user testing in a supermarketscenario. Subjects were invited to walk the hallways of a virtualsupermarket looking in the shelves for specific products -- sometimes hidden by other objects -- that they need to pick upand put over a table in a pre-defined position and orientation.Results showed that our solution fulfill the needs of this kindof complex task, in a natural, funny and attractive way.