Estimation of Detection Thresholds for Acoustic Based Redirected Walking Techniques

We describe two psychophysical experiments where we have quantified how much humans can unknowingly be redirected by auditory stimuli. The experiments use a two-alternative-forced-choice task. We tested 19 subjects in two different experiments: (E1) discrimination between virtual and physical rotation, and (E2) discrimination of path curvature. In experiment E1 subjects performed rotations with different gains, and then had to choose whether the auditory perceived rotation was smaller or greater than the physical rotation. In experiment E2 subjects estimate the path curvature when walking a curved path in the real world while the visual display shows a straight path in the virtual world. Our results show that users can be turned physically about 20% percent more or 12% less than the perceived virtual rotation, and users can be redirected on a circular arc while they believe they are walking straight.