NaviNord: A Multisensory Virtual Reality Application for Measuring Spatial Navigation Memory in Complex Environments

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a major field in daily human interactions aiming towards fully immersive worlds and experiences. However, enriching immersive virtual interactions with multimodal feedback is not yet well-developed or explored, and our understanding of multisensory virtual enhancements and their effects of human cognition, perception, and behaviour is limited. The NaviNord project utilizes a maze-like VR forest that contains a combination of distinct visual landmarks, which are enhanced with congruent smells and/or sounds through wearable devices. The VR user can navigate the forest using one of four different omnidirectional locomotion techniques, namely normal walking, controller teleportation, walk-in-place slide-mill, or semi-walk-in-place treadmill. The project entails different tasks aiming to examine how different multimodalities influence our perception of virtual environments, and how we can better utilize sensory input to enhance spatial awareness, memory, navigation, and overall cognition for various populations.