Distributed, Collaborative Virtual Reality Application for Product Development with Simple Avatar Calibration Method

In this work we present a collaborative virtual reality application for distributed engineering tasks, including a simple avatar calibration method. Use cases for the application include CAD review, ergonomics analyses or virtual training. Full-body avatars with approximately natural motion characteristics are used to improve collaboration in terms of co-presence and embodiment. Through a calibration process, scaled avatars based on body measurements can be generated by users from within the VR application. For motion tracking, only the tracking capabilities of the VR devices used (head mounted display and hand controllers) are required, in order to achieve a low initialization effort for usage of the application. We demonstrate a simple, yet effective method for measuring the human body which requires these VR devices only. Tracking only the user's head and hands, we require inverse kinematics (IK) for avatar motion reconstruction. On the other hand, this requires a calibrated avatar, otherwise body postures and gestures will be misrepresented. In the first step of the demo, two users can create their calibrated avatar at the same time and then carry out a collaborative CAD review in the second step.