Integrating Heterogeneous VR Systems Into Physical Space for Collaborative Extended Reality

Abstract

Virtual reality(VR) applications are typically developed within their own immersive digital worlds; therefore, virtual spaces are usually treated as discrete from the physical space where augmented and mixed reality users exist, which makes it difficult to combine these heterogeneous realities into an integrated extended reality(XR) environment. Along these lines, we propose a method that enables a user to geometrically register the virtual space within a VR application to a real space using a commodity camera in a workspace as an anchor point. We first investigate the mathematical aspect of the computational model for connecting the virtual space to the physical world. Then, we present a computational procedure that implements our proposed method with numerical accuracy and stability. As an application, we demonstrate that users of two VR systems from different vendors may collaborate within a shared real workspace while interacting with each other physically. The presented method provides a key mechanism for enabling XR users to leverage these immersive technologies by effectively using different realities within an integrated environment.

Keywords

• Human-centered computing
• human–computer interaction (HCI)
• interaction paradigms
• virtual reality