Enhanced framework for a personalized user interface based on a unified context-aware application model for virtual environments

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a enhanced framework for a Personalized User Interface (PUI). This framework allows users to access and customize virtual objects in virtual environments in the sense of sharing user centric context with virtual objects. The proposed framework is enhanced by integrating a unified context-aware application for virtual environments (vr-UCAM 1.5) into virtual objects in the PUI framework. It allows a virtual object to receive context from both real and virtual environments, to decide responses based on context and if-then rules, and to communicate with other objects individually. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we applied it to a virtual heritage system. Experimental results show that we enhance the accessibility and the customizability of virtual objects through the PUI. The proposed framework is expected to play an important role in VR applications such as education, entertainment, and storytelling.