A Model Predictive Control Approach for Reach Redirection in Virtual Reality

Reach redirection is an illusion-based virtual reality (VR) interaction technique where a user’s virtual hand is shifted during a reach in order to guide their real hand to a physical location. Prior works have not considered the underlying sensorimotor processes driving redirection. In this work, we propose adapting a sensorimotor model for goal-directed reach to obtain a model for visually-redirected reach, specifically by incorporating redirection as a sensory bias in the state estimate used by a minimum jerk motion controller. We validate and then leverage this model to develop a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach for reach redirection, enabling the real-time generation of spatial warping according to desired optimization criteria (e.g., redirection goals) and constraints (e.g., sensory thresholds). We illustrate this approach with two example criteria – redirection to a desired point and redirection along a desired path – and compare our approach against existing techniques in a user evaluation.