December 10, 2024: Intermediate report (Year 1) Submitted!

The first year of the SocNav project concludes with remarkable achievements and a highly active collaboration between partners. Despite its brevity, this year has been rich in productive and frequent exchanges that have solidified our shared vision. To foster seamless communication, we established a dedicated Mattermost channel and organized monthly online meetings, supplemented by targeted discussions for specific project needs.

Key Milestones Achieved in 2024 

● Axis 1: Successful integration of Umans in LogVs to populate virtual environments with virtual humans. Proof of concept and pilot data for extending the platform to represent manual wheelchair users. Pilot experiment to design reactive virtual humans when participants enter their personal space. Early development of a power wheelchair simulator at Cirris, complementing the one in Rennes, supported by the visit of programmers from Rennes to Québec. A collaborative research protocol has been started (submission to ethics planned Jan 2025).

● Axis 2: Conducted an experiment in Québec examining the effect of physical activity levels (sedentary vs. active young adults) on navigating virtual crowds with varying densities. Submitted a symposium proposal for ISPGR 2025 focusing on theories of locomotor navigation and control variables.

● Axis 3: Engaged in discussions with clinicians at both sites and prepared ethics applications for a navigation study involving patients with traumatic brain injuries. Initiated an agreement for data sharing between sites.

● Dissemination Efforts: The associate team actively shared its progress and insights at a variety of conferences, workshops, and seminars in 2024: EWIC Conference (Naples, June 2024), 3DMove Workshop (Grenoble, Dec 2024), Seminar at Virtual Reality & Immersive Visualization Group at RWTH Aachen University (Germany, June 2024), XRIA Workshop (Spain, October 2024), VHCIE Workshop during IEEE VR (Orlando, March 2024), ACM VRST (Germany, October 2024), to the Sports Science Master students (Rennes, November 2024).

Through these numerous initiatives, the SocNav project has laid a robust foundation for innovative research collaboration. We look forward to building on this in the next 2 years!