Design and Evaluation of a Free-Hand VR-based Authoring Environment for Automated Vehicle Testing
Sevinc Eroglu, Frederic Stefan, Alain Chevalier, Daniel Roettger, Daniel Zielasko, Torsten Kuhlen, Benjamin Weyers · 2021
Virtual Reality is increasingly used for safe evaluation and validation of autonomous vehicles by automotive engineers. However, the design and creation of virtual testing environments is a cumbersome process. Engineers are bound to utilize desktop-based authoring tools, and a high level of expertise is necessary. By performing scene authoring entirely inside VR, faster design iterations become possible. To this end, we propose a VR authoring environment that enables engineers to design road networks and traffic scenarios for automated vehicle testing based on free-hand interaction. We present a 3D interaction technique for the efficient placement and selection of virtual objects that is employed on a 2D panel. We conducted a comparative user study in which our interaction technique outperformed existing approaches regarding precision and task completion time. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the system by a qualitative user study with domain experts.