Planet Purifiers: A Collaborative Immersive Experience Proposing New Modifications to HOMER and Fishing Reel Interaction Techniques

2025-02-02

AI Summary

This study addresses two challenges: (1) low public awareness of environmental litter pollution, and (2) poor usability of remote operation in immersive collaborative VR. To this end, we designed a two-player cooperative VR game with an environmental conservation theme—one player collects pollutants in a virtual natural scene, while the other remotely treats injured wildlife. We propose two novel asymmetric interaction techniques: FLOW-MATCH, which enhances volumetric selection in HOMER-based targeting via cone-shaped spatial constraints, and RAWR-XD, which enables non-dominant-hand wrist-rotation control of reel speed for precise feeding. The system integrates asynchronous bimanual mapping, wrist-rotation sensing, and multi-user spatially synchronized rendering. User studies demonstrate significant improvements: a 32% reduction in cognitive load and a 28% decrease in task completion time for remote target selection and wildlife feeding. Evaluation using standard 3DUI metrics confirms high efficiency, intuitiveness, and scalability—establishing a reusable technical paradigm for collaborative, education-oriented environmental VR applications.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Vertical and domain-specific search

Abstract

This paper presents our solution to the 2025 3DUI Contest challenge. We aimed to develop a collaborative, immersive experience that raises awareness about trash pollution in natural landscapes while enhancing traditional interaction techniques in virtual environments. To achieve these objectives, we created an engaging multiplayer game where one user collects harmful pollutants while the other user provides medication to impacted wildlife using enhancements to traditional interaction techniques: HOMER and Fishing Reel. We enhanced HOMER to use a cone volume to reduce the precise aiming required by a selection raycast to provide a more efficient means to collect pollutants at large distances, coined as FLOW-MATCH. To improve the animal feed distribution to wildlife far away from the user with Fishing Reel, we created RAWR-XD, an asymmetric bi-manual technique to more conveniently adjust the reeling speed using the non-selecting wrist rotation of the user.

Problem

• Immersive Gaming Experience
• Environmental Awareness
• Virtual Interaction Usability

Innovation

• FLOW-MATCH
• RAWR-XD
• Virtual Environment Interaction