Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online.
Shaikh Shawon Arefin Shimon, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
Virtual Reality (VR) users with limited physical space or lower-limb disabilities often rely on seated and reclined experiences on stationary furniture, restricting the use of bare-hand locomotion techniques that depend on lower-body movement. Existing non-controller locomotion approaches that avoid lower-limb input typically rely on gaze-based interaction or manual gestures performed below the neck, or within the field of view (FOV) of head-mounted displays (HMDs). However, these approaches often provide limited support for complex locomotion actions such as turning, crouching, or jumping, and can interfere with object manipulation, leading to instability and fatigue.
To address these limitations, we introduce Beyond-FOV locomotion, a unimanual bare-hand interaction technique that leverages above-neck gestures performed around the HMD outside the user’s field of view. By relocating locomotion input to the beyond-FOV space around the HMD, the approach enables navigation while preserving within-FOV interaction, supporting simultaneous locomotion and object manipulation without explicit mode switching. We evaluate this approach in a controlled within-subject experiment with 16 participants, comparing it with a controller baseline and two within-FOV gestural techniques across measures of task performance, workload, usability, and user comfort. Our findings indicate that Beyond-FOV locomotion provides a competitive alternative to existing bare-hand approaches, reducing interference with object manipulation while supporting efficient and comfortable navigation in seated or space-constrained VR settings.