Non Anthropomorphic Virtual Reality
Embodied prototyping
In order to fully immerse myself in the body of the Rover I chose the medium of virtual reality to explore the interaction and experience of emulating my self as a Mars rover. The approach was to create quick rough Unity based VR sketches that I can experience and calibrate my movements to that of the rover.
Immobilizers
One of the key insights from the quick prototyping research was the application of immobilizers, The immobilizers are movement resistance devices that allow you to move only in a limited space or axis, The key insight was that if we limit our movement to that of the virtual avatar our brain tricks itself to believe that the virtual body is in-fact its real body. This allows full immersion and removes the feeling of puppeteering the rover in VR
Each avatar has its own sets of immobilizers. The image above shows the ones that we might use to translate our human form to a mars rover.
Co-op VR control
The experience allows a user to actually emulate the behavior of the mars rover. This video demonstrate how a rover has to be controlled by a user and at the same time have some intelligence to do exactly what the mission requires. The user and the rover behaviour has to be in-sync for the mission to be successful.