Niu, Yunfang; Wang, Danli; Wang, Ziwei; Sun, Fan; Yue, Kang; Zheng, Nan
Abstract
At present, the research on emotion in the virtual environment is limited to the subjective materials, and there are very few studies based on objective physiological signals. In this article, the authors conducted a user experiment to study the user emotion experience of virtual reality (VR) by comparing subjective feelings and physiological data in VR and two-dimensional display (2D) environments. First, they analyzed the data of self-report questionnaires, including Self-assessment Manikin (SAM), Positive And Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). The result indicated that VR causes a higher level of arousal than 2D, and easily evokes positive emotions. Both 2D and VR environments are prone to eye fatigue, but VR is more likely to cause symptoms of dizziness and vertigo. Second, they compared the differences of electrocardiogram (ECG), skin temperature (SKT) and electrodermal activity (EDA) signals in two circumstances. Through mathematical analysis, all three signals had significant differences. Participants in the VR environment had a higher degree of excitement, and the mood fluctuations are more frequent and more intense. In addition, the authors used different machine learning models for emotion detection, and compared the accuracies on VR and 2D datasets. The accuracies of all algorithms in the VR environment are higher than that of 2D, which corroborated that the volunteers in the VR environment have more obvious skin electrical signals, and had a stronger sense of immersion. This article effectively compensated for the inadequacies of existing work. The authors first used objective physiological signals for experience evaluation and used different types of subjective materials to make contrast. They hope their study can provide helpful guidance for the engineering reality of virtual reality.
Publisher
JOURNAL OF IMAGING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Research Area
Imaging Science & Photographic Technology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2352/J.ImagingSci.Technol.2019.63.6.060413