A comparison of measurement techniques used for 3-D pointing tests

Due to the increased popularity of virtual environment (VE) technology and its potential to develop further technological advances in many fields, considerable research is being done in this area. Nevertheless, VE technology, due to its very nature, depends very strongly on its human user. One of the biggest drawbacks of VE technology today is the health and safety concerns it presents to users. Many VE users experience motion sickness and other aftereffects. In addition, the human body reacts to-these disturbances by adapting to the VE, returning an individual that has learned maladaptive behavior. This is a big concern due to potential health and safety risks. Thus, there is potential to develop effective. measurement techniques that measure changes in visuomotor functioning, such as the kinesthetic position sense (i.e., eye-hand coordination), to gauge VE aftereffects. This research project consists of identifying and testing an objective measurement algorithm that may determine changes in eye-hand coordination by evaluating an individual\u27s pointing ability before and after VE exposure. In order to obtain an effective measurement technique, methods that have proven to quantitatively characterize the nature of pointing behavior and, therefore, provide a measure of kinesthetic position sense, as well as other proposed methods, were investigated. These methods included pointing accuracy in the X, Y and Z directions, difference between identity and experimental touch, the total distance, and the average pointing error. Data gathered from an experiment was analyzed in order to obtain a measurement technique that demonstrates reliability and sensitivity . The results from this study suggested that when measuring changes in proprioceptive functioning due to VE exposure, an individual\u27s exact coordinate location in X, Y and Z dimensions with eyes open conditions (visual feedback) should be measured since, compared to other measurement techniques, this method provides more reliability and sensitivity to changes in proprioceptive functioning