Daniel Mestre

French National Centre for Scientific Research | CNRS · Institute of Movement Sciences (UMR 7287, Aix-Marseille University)

Aircraft maintenance technicians (AMTs) play an essential role in life-long security of helicopters. There are two major types of operations in maintenance activity: information intake/processing and motor actions. Modeling expertise of the AMT is the main objective of this doctoral project. Given the constraints of real-world research, mobile eye-...

The aim of this preliminary, observational study is to validate a new methodology using eye tracking to capture the consultation of the maintenance documentation during a helicopter maintenance task.

Herein we present electrophysiological evidence of extremely rapid learning of new labels in a second language (L2) for existing concepts, via computerized games. However, the effect was largely constrained by crosslinguistic grammatical gender congruency. We recorded ERPs both prior to exposure with the L2 and following a 4-day training session. P...

Car manufacturers expect driving simulators to be reliable research and development tools. Questions arise, however, as to whether drivers’ behavior on simulators exactly matches that observed when they are driving real cars. Drivers’ performances and their subjective feelings about their driving were compared between two groups during a 40-min dri...

More than 1.3 million people lose their lives every year in traffic accidents. Improving road safety requires designing better vehicles and investigating drivers’ abilities more closely. Driving simulators are constantly being used for this purpose, but the question which often arises as to their validity tends to be a barrier to developments in th...

The purpose of the International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications (CHIRA) is to bring together professionals, academics and students who are interested in the advancement of research and practical applications of interaction design & human-computer interaction. Five parallel tracks will be held, covering different...

Microsoft has recently released a mixed reality headset called HoloLens. This semi-transparent visor headset allows the user who wears it to view the projection of 3D virtual objects placed in its real environment. The user can also grasp these 3D objects, which can also interact with each other. The framework of this new technology taking into acc...

Optic flow is a significant source of information to perceive travelled distance. In previous studies, we found, in static observers, that adding viewpoint oscillations mimicking head motion during walking to an optic flow simulating forward self-motion, improved this perception. Here, we compared two modalities for the perception of travelled dist...

Optic flow has been found to be a significant cue for static observers' perception of distance travelled. In previous research conducted in a large-scale immersive display (CAVE), adding viewpoint oscillations to a radial optic flow simulating forward self-motion was found to modulate this perception. In the present two experiments, we investigated...

Participants were instructed to reproduce a previously observed distance by travelling passively at a constant velocity into straight textured tunnels in a CAVE. The diameter of the tunnel into which participants travelled and the egocentric distance to be reproduced were manipulated. Participants’ distance perception was sensitive to the tunnel’s...

With the increasing use of avatars (i.e. the virtual representation of the user in a virtual environment) in virtual reality, it is important to identify the factors eliciting the sense of embodiment or the factors that can disrupt this feeling. This paper reports an exploratory study aiming at identifying internal factors (personality traits and b...

Embodied cognition studies have shown motor resonance during action language processing, indicating that linguistic representations are at least partially multimodal. However, constraints of this activation linked to linguistic and extra-linguistic context, function and timing have not yet been fully explored. Importantly, embodied cognition binds...

The way doctors deliver bad news has a significant impact on the therapeutic process. In order to facilitate doctor’s training, we have developed an embodied conversational agent simulating a patient to train doctors to break bad news. In this article, we present an evaluation of the virtual reality training platform comparing the users’ experience...

31st Annual Congress of the European-Association-of-Nuclear-Medicine (EANM), Dusseldorf, GERMANY, OCT 13-17, 2018

Using a new vehicle requires an adaptation time. This is especially true when the new “vehicle” is a driving simulator. Precedent research on this topic mainly focused on the first minutes of driving. However, an incomplete adaptation and/or large difference between driving behavior in real and simulated conditions might influence experimental resu...

Driving experiments in real conditions are considered as a “gold standard” to evaluate the effects of drugs on driving performance. Several constraints are difficult to manage in these conditions, so driving simulation appears as the best alternative. A preliminary comparison is crucial before being able to use driving simulation as a valid evaluat...

De par sa forte prévalence, sa chronicité et son impact social, la peur des hauteurs ou acrophobie représente un domaine de recherche important. La thérapie comportementale par exposition à la réalité virtuelle (TERV) a démontré son efficacité clinique dans le traitement de cette pathologie. Le but de cette étude TEP était de caractériser le métabo...

Humans and most animals are able to navigate in their environment, which generates sensorial information of various kinds, such as proprioceptive cues and optic flow. Previous research focusing on the visual effects of walking (bob, sway, and lunge head motion) has shown that the perception of forward self-motion experienced by static observers can...

Technological development brings increasingly closer the era of widely available self-driving cars. However, presumably there will be a time when human drivers and self-driving cars would share the same roads. In the current paper, we propose a cognitive warning system that utilizes information collected from the behaviour of the human driver and s...

Spatial awareness in virtual reality (VR) is a dominant research topic. It plays an essential role in the assessment of human operators’ behavior in simulated tasks, notably for the evaluation of the feasibility of manual maintenance tasks in cluttered industrial settings. In such contexts, it is decisive to evaluate the spatial and temporal corres...

In everyday life, humans and most animals need to navigate in their environment, which produces multiple sources of perceptual information, such as locomotor cues (i.e. proprioceptive, efference copy and vestibular cues) and optic flow. However, few studies focused on the role of the visual consequences of walking (bob, sway, and lunge head motion)...

The development of fusion plants is more and more challenging. Compared to previous fusion experimental devices, integration constraints, maintenance and safety requirements are key parameters in the ITER project. Components are designed in parallel and we must consider integration, assembly and maintenance issues, which might have a huge impact on...

In virtual reality (VR), spatial awareness is a dominant research topic. It plays an essential role in the assessment of human operators’ behavior within virtual environments (VE), notably for the evaluation of the feasibility of manual maintenance tasks in cluttered industrial settings. In such contexts, it is decisive to evaluate the spatial and...

When static observers are presented with a visual simulation of forward self-motion, they generally misestimate distance travelled relative to a previously seen distant target: It has been suggested that this finding can be accounted for by a ‘‘leaky path integration’’ model. In the present study, using a similar experimental procedure, this result...

When static observers are exposed to a visual simulation of forward self-motion, they generally overestimate travelled distance relative to a previously seen distant target (Redlick, Harris, & Jenkin, 2001). Using the same experimental paradigm, we reproduced this result, which can be accounted for by a "leaky path integration" model (Lappe, Jenkin...

We previously demonstrated that behavioral adjustments to environmental properties constituted an objective indicator of presence in Virtual Reality (VR). The subject’s task was to walk through virtual apertures of variable width. Subjects exhibited a behavioral transition, from frontal walking to body rotation, while walking from broad to narrow a...

As soon as “serious” conclusions (with respect to reality) have to be drawn from virtual reality experiences (training, virtual prototyping…), it is now more and more acknowledged that, besides display calibration and computer graphics issues, some attention has to be given to perceptual calibration, on the human side. This paper presents results f...

The general aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of an interactive aerial view of the experienced environment during the encoding and retrieving of spatial information on the feeling of presence. Our findings showed that this real-time interactive aerial view (both small and large) during the encoding and retrieval of spatial info...

The present study tested the effects of sensorial inputs on performance and attentional focus during physical training on a computerized ergometer. 18 students were involved in this study. The experimental procedure consisted in a 3x3x4 mixed design, with 3 practice modalities (virtual feedback, virtual feedback and music, virtual and heart rate fe...

Pour ce qui est du dispositif "ultime" de réalité virtuelle, le "CAVE" a longtemps été considéré comme la référence, notamment dans le cadre de travail collaboratif (mais coûteuse, pas transportable, etc.). Même s'ils existent depuis longtemps, les casques de réalité virtuelle (HMD) ont récemment suscité un grand regain d'intérêt. Du fait de l'inve...

NASPSPA Conference, Hawai'i 2012

Distance estimation from visually simulated self-motion is imprecise. Depending on the evaluation method, travelled distance can be under- or over-estimated. One particular method consists of asking a stationary observer, exposed to an immersive optical flow, simulating forward self-motion, to indicate when s/he thinks s/he has reached the remember...

Magnetic Confinement Fusion machines called tokamak (e.g. ITER and WEST projects), as well as many industrial projects, require a high integration level in a confined volume. The feasibility of installation and maintenance by an operator has to be considered in the early stages of the design. Virtual reality technologies have opened new perspective...

Magnetic Confinement Fusion machines called tokamak (e.g. ITER and WEST projects), as well as many industrial projects, require a high integration level in a confined volume. The feasibility of installation and maintenance by an operator has to be considered in the early stages of the design. Virtual reality technologies have opened new perspective...

Much is known about how different spatial reference frames continually interact to support spatial navigation, but less explored is whether it is more crucial to process object-to-object information or egocentric heading information for effective orientation in a cluttered environment. To address this question, we evaluated the possible influence o...

This pilot study aims to find a way to measure ‘presence’ as a proxy for ecological validity in driving simulators. The underlying assumption is that a person experiencing a strong sense of presence in the virtual environment will react as if it were real. We measure ‘presence’ through the ‘attention’ given to the driving task. We hypothesize that...

The main contribution of this paper to the Cognitive Ergonomics field is to propose a new approach of the behavioral validity's assessment of driving simulators. In this paper, our ambition is to find a way of measuring “presence” to use it as a measure for ecological validity in driving simulators. In this way, the purpose of this study is especia...

Designing multimodal virtual environments promises revolutionary advances in interacting with computers in the near future. In this paper, we report the results of an experimental investigation on the possible use of surround-sound systems to support visualization, taking advantage of increased knowledge about how spatial perception and attention w...

In a Multi-stereoscopic immersive system, several users sharing the same restricted workspace, e.g. a CAVE, may need to perform independent navigation to achieve loosely coupled collaboration tasks for a complex scenario. In this context, a proper navigation paradigm should provide users both an efficient control of virtual navigation and a guarant...

Virtual Reality (VR) leads to realistic experimental situations, while enabling researchers to have deterministic control on these situations, and to precisely measure participants' behavior. However, because more realistic and complex situations can be implemented, important questions arise, concerning the validity and representativeness of the ob...

Self-orientation perception relies on the integration of multiple sensory inputs which convey spatially-related visual and postural cues. In the present study, an experimental set-up was used to tilt the body and/or the visual scene to investigate how these postural and visual cues are integrated for self-tilt perception (the subjective sensation o...

The main contribution of this paper to the Cognitive Ergonomics field is to propose a new approach of the behavioral validity's assessment of driving simulators. In this paper, our ambition is to find a way of measuring "presence" to use it as a measure for ecological validity in driving simulators. The underlying assumption is that a person experi...

Modern training through virtual environments are widely used in transport in order to provide a high level of precision and more and more complex situations. These virtual environments provide training scenarii with automatic and repetitive feedback to the trainees. Experienced learners receive too many aids and novice learners too few. In this res...

Performing accurate actions such as goal-directed arm movements requires taking into account visual and body orientation cues to localize the target in space and produce appropriate reaching motor commands. We experimentally tilted the body and/or the visual scene to investigate how visual and body orientation cues are combined for the control of u...

The present work highlights current developments and an ongoing experimental evaluation of how a tablet PC can effectively act as an interaction device for 3D manipulation tasks. More specifically, we focused on a 3D docking task. This collaborative project was conducted within the Visionair European project. The goal was to design a versatile inte...

When users are immersed in cave-like virtual reality systems, navigational interfaces have to be used when the size of the virtual environment becomes larger than the physical extent of the cave floor. However, using navigation interfaces, physically static users experience self-motion (visually-induced vection). As a consequence, sensorial incoher...

We have designed a configurable virtual environment to train rugby ball passing skills. Seeking to validate the system’s ability to correctly aid training, two experiments were performed. Ten participants took part in ball passing activities, which were used to compare the combinations of different user positions relative to the physical screen, th...

RESUME Nous présentons ici nos réflexions et des développements visant à réaliser une interface homme-machine pour une tâche d'interaction 3D. Ce projet, réalisé dans le cadre du projet européen d'infrastructure VISIONAIR, doit permettre d'élaborer une tâche de docking via une unique interface, quel que soit le système de visualisation utilisé (Ecr...

We have designed and developed a virtual environment to train rugby ball passing skills. Seeking to validate the system's ability to correctly aid training, an initial experiment was performed to examine the effect of stereoscopic technology and the physical screen's setup on the user's ability to perceive virtual distances correctly. Four particip...

Sensori-motor experiences participate in the construction of a mental representation of the body, which is known as the "body schema". This internal model allows the delimitation of the peripersonal space of action - i.e. an area that extends until the maximal length of the limbs - versus the extrapersonal space - i.e. an area that is out of reach...

This paper uses Bayesian networks to investigate the impact of three different kind of inputs, namely, physiological, cognitive and affect features, on workload estimation, from a computational point of view. The ability of the proposed models to infer the workload variation of subjects involved in successive tasks demanding different levels of cog...

Studies on the direction of a driver's gaze while taking a bend show that the individual looks toward the tangent-point of the inside curve. Mathematically, the direction of this point in relation to the car enables the driver to predict the curvature of the road. In the same way, when a person walking in the street turns a corner, his/her gaze ant...

This paper presents an approach based on Bayesian Networks to estimate the workload of operators. The models take as inputs the entropy of different number of physiological features, as well as a cognitive feature (reaction time to a secondary task). They output the workload variation of subjects involved in successive tasks demanding different lev...

Many experimental approaches to the control of steering rely on the tangent point (TP) as major source of information. The TP is a good candidate to control self-motion. It corresponds to a singular and salient point in the subject's visual field, and its location depends on the road geometry, the direction of self-motion relative to the road and t...

Appendix and supporting figures. In this appendix, we first demonstrate that the TP corresponds to a local minimum of optical speed, and coincides with the intersection of the inside line of a road and a virtual circle formed by all the points where the horizontal component of the optical flow is reversed. The optical flow computation method employ...

We previously showed that global optical flow due to the driver's self-motion could interfere with the analysis of another vehicle motion when arriving at an intersection. Such analysis is also dependent of optical local flows, such as the visual trajectory of the other vehicle and/or relative visual motion between the other vehicle and visual cues...

In order to avoid an impending collision while driving, the driver has to make a precise evaluation of the time available for taking an appropriate avoidance action (braking, swerving, etc.). This evaluation is made on the basis of visual information and involves the processing of local optical flow created by the presence of another vehicle. Previ...