SafeTeleport: Potential Field-Guided Teleportation for Personal Space Protection in Social VR

In social virtual reality (VR), maintaining appropriate interpersonal distance is essential for user comfort and privacy. However, most existing locomotion methods provide limited support for respecting personal space, leaving users vulnerable to unintentional or socially inappropriate intrusions. To address this issue, we propose potential field-guided teleportation, a proactive locomotion framework consisting of two method implementations that dynamically adjust teleportation targets based on real-time interpersonal proximity, preventing entry into others' personal spaces without explicit user intervention. We evaluate our technique through two user studies: a preliminary study exploring energy-based constraint parameters, followed by a comparative study against conventional and negotiated teleportation methods. Experiments were conducted in socially interactive VR scenarios populated with simulated users exhibiting human-like behaviors. Results demonstrate that our methods reduce perceived social anxiety while maintaining locomotion efficiency and usability. This work presents a socially-aware locomotion strategy that balances personal space protection with effective and socially appropriate movement in shared virtual environments.