A Multi-Object Grasp Technique

Apr 21, 2022

Some daily tasks involve grasping multiple objects in one hand and releasing them in a determined order, for example laying out a surgical table or distributing items on shelves. For training these tasks in Virtual Reality (VR), there is no technique for allowing users to grasp multiple objects in one hand in a realistic way, and it is not known if such a technique would benefit user experience.

Here, we design a multi-object grasp technique that enables users to grasp multiple objects in one hand and release them in a controlled way. We tested an object placement task under three conditions: real life, VR with single-object grasp and VR with multi-object grasp. Task completion time, distance travelled by the hands and subjective experience were measured in three scenarios: sitting in front of a desktop table, standing up in front of shelves and a room-size scenario where walking was required.

Results show that the performance in a real environment is better than in Virtual Reality, both for single-object and multi-object grasping. The single-object technique performs better than the multi-object, except for the room scenario, where multi-object leads to less distance travelled and reported physical demand. For use cases where the distances are small (i.e., desktop scenario), single-object grasp is simpler and easier to understand. For larger scenarios, the multi-object grasp technique represents a good option that can be considered by other application designers.

Cite this Work

BibTex:

@article{fernandez2022multi,
title={A Multi-Object Grasp Technique for Placement of Objects in Virtual Reality},
author={Fern{\’a}ndez, Unai J and Elizondo, Sonia and Iriarte, Naroa and Morales, Rafael and Ortiz, Amalia and Marichal, Sebastian and Ardaiz, Oscar and Marzo, Asier},
journal={Applied Sciences},
volume={12},
number={9},
pages={4193},
year={2022},
publisher={MDPI}
}

APA:

Fernández, U. J., Elizondo, S., Iriarte, N., Morales, R., Ortiz, A., Marichal, S., … & Marzo, A. (2022). A Multi-Object Grasp Technique for Placement of Objects in Virtual Reality. Applied Sciences, 12(9), 4193.