Abstract

This paper proposes a bowl-shaped hemispherical display to observe omnidirectional images. This display type has many advantages over conventional, flat 2D displays, in particular when it is used for controlling remote vehicles. First, it allows users to observe an azimuthal equidistant view of omnidirectional images by looking from above. Second, it provides a first-person view by looking into the inside of the hemispherical surface from diagonally above. Third, it provides a pseudo–third-person view as if we watched the remote vehicle from its back, by observing both the inside and outside at the same time from obliquely above. These characteristics solve the issues of blind angles around the remote vehicle. We conduct a VR-based user study to compare the bowl-shaped display to an equirectangular projection on a 2D display and a first-person view used in head-mounted displays. Based on the insights gained in the study, we present a real-world implementation and describe the uniqueness, advantages but also shortcomings of our method.

Video

Citarion Format

  1. Shio Miyafuji, Florian Perteneder, Toshiki Sato, Hideki Koike, and Gudrun Klinker. 2019. A Bowl-Shaped Display for Controlling Remote Vehicles. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry (VRCAI ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 10, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359997.3365706

  2. Shio Miyafuji, Soichiro Toyohara, Toshiki Sato, and Hideki Koike. 2019. Remote control experiment with displaybowl and 360-degree video. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Posters (SIGGRAPH ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 62, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3306214.3338568