CDBRINKM | Animal Vision Experiments

Animals perceive their environment visually in different ways than humans do. Few educative applications have been developed that try to bring the experience of having animal vision to a general public. Animal Vision Experiments is a prototype of a virtual reality experience that enables people to figuratively put on a new pair of eyes of an animal they like, where the focus in this research was to put on the eyes of a chameleon. By making use of subtle educative explanations about the visual system of a specific animal, users are motivated to compare visual systems of different animals with each other, including their own. The interaction paradigm and the implementation of educative aspects were the most important topics during the development. The result could be used in an educative setting, and simultaneously in scientific contexts, to get a better understanding of vision and visual information processing in general.

The chameleon was chosen because its visual system lends itself very well for experimentation with VR. Creating a mapping from the chameleon's sight system into a VR application has become an interesting opportunity, since VR offers the possibility to project different images onto each individual eye of the viewer. VR is the only medium that allows for (simulated) individual eye movement.

In collaboration with: Xanders Bos and Donna Schipper