Projects
The Navigation Lab studies how people perceive, navigate, and tolerate immersive virtual environments. Our research combines cognitive psychology, human factors, and virtual reality methods to understand spatial cognition, VR movement, and user comfort.
Current projects are organized around three overlapping areas: cybersickness research, navigation and spatial cognition, and locomotion interfaces for virtual reality.
Cybersickness Research
Cybersickness is a form of discomfort that can occur during or after immersive virtual reality. Our lab studies cybersickness, VR tolerance, adaptation, recovery, and individual differences in response to VR exposure.
Current work examines symptom measurement, health and personality predictors, sex and gender-related factors, repeated exposure, mitigation tools, and recovery after VR use. This research is supported in part by National Science Foundation grant 2309990.
Read more about our cybersickness research.
Navigation and Spatial Cognition
The lab studies how people learn, remember, and use spatial information. This work examines cue integration, spatial memory, reference frames, prior knowledge, path integration, and decision processes in navigation.
Current projects use behavioral experiments, immersive virtual reality, and computational models to understand how people combine spatial cues, resolve cue conflicts, and use navigation aids such as maps. This research is supported in part by National Science Foundation grant 2217890.
Read more about our navigation and spatial cognition research.
Locomotion Interfaces for Virtual Reality
Virtual environments are often larger than the physical space available for walking. VR users therefore rely on locomotion interfaces such as teleporting, joystick movement, redirected movement, or other travel techniques.
Our lab studies how locomotion interfaces affect spatial learning, user experience, disorientation, and cybersickness. This work connects our research on human navigation, VR design, and user comfort. It has been supported in part by National Science Foundation grant 1816029.