Reducing sickness and enhancing virtual reality simulation on mobile devices by tracking the body rotation

Smartphones are well fit to be used as head mounted displays for virtual reality, because they already embed the sensors necessary to track the head rotation. The purpose of this study is to find out how much we can improve the user experience by adding three more degrees of freedom to track the user chest rotation, in particular with respect to the perceived motion sickness. With this addition the user can rotate the body independently from the head, meaning that he or she can look in a direction different from the one he or she is facing. The interface is complemented with a technique to match the rotation of the user body and head with his or her virtual avatar. The proposed physical interface is tested on two custom simulations. The first is a virtual museum where the user can walk and look around. The user can control the direction where the avatar is looking with the head, and the direction he or she is facing using the body. The second simulation is a game that uses the chest rotation as a core gameplay mechanic, allowing to control a flying skateboard by moving the body, with the goal of traveling around a circuit to establish the best time.