Motion control of virtual reality based on an inertia-based sensing mechanism and a novel approach to redirected walking

This research presents a motion control algorithm for constructing a portable virtual reality system, which can operate in any indoor or outdoor open space without the need for support from any pre-installed infrastructure. The real head and foot motions continuously measured by inertial sensors during natural walking are used as a part of the inputs to the algorithm to control the virtual walking motions of the user. In conjunction with such control, a novel approach to redirected walking is incorporated in the algorithm to continuously adjust the rotation of the virtual environment to redirect the user away from the boundary (i.e., walls and objects) of the real environment. Such an approach, namely the relative approach, adopts the directions and distances of the boundary relative to the user (i.e., the relative local information) instead of the absolute positions and orientations of the user for performing redirection. A ranging sensor is used for collecting the relative local information. The effectiveness of the algorithm was experimentally verified and demonstrated.