Virtual Environments in Physical Therapy

Extended-Reality Technologies: An Overview of Emerging Applications in Medical Education and Clinical Care.

Mirror drawing is a motor learning task that is used to evaluate and improve eye-hand coordination of users and can be implemented in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) for training purposes. In this paper, we investigated the effect of color cues on user motor performance in a mirror-drawing task between Virtual Environment (VE) and Real World (RW), with three different colors. We conducted a 5-day user study with twelve participants. The results showed that the participants made fewer errors in RW compared to VR, except for pre-training, which indicated that hardware and software limitations have detrimental effects on the motor learning of the participants across different realities. Furthermore, participants made fewer errors with the colors close to green, which is usually associated with serenity, contentment, and relaxation. According to our findings, VR headsets can be used to evaluate participants' eye-hand coordination in mirror drawing tasks to evaluate the motor-learning of participants. VE and RW training applications could benefit from our findings in order to enhance their effectiveness.

Immersing Patients in a Virtual Reality Environment for Brain Mapping During Awake Surgery: Safety Study

This abstract is a companion piece to the ninth iteration of the “Me and My VE” interactive session. The purpose of this alternative format session is to allow human factors researchers to demonstrate how they use virtual reality, mixed reality, and virtual environments to support end-user research. The session begins with each presenter providing a brief introduction of their virtual reality, mixed reality, or virtual environment application. After this introduction, attendees engage with the presenters and their virtual environments in an interactive demonstration period. This year’s demonstrations include applications ranging from designing virtual environments for accessibility to using virtual and extended reality to support medical and aviation training, content validation, and human-computer interaction studies. The goal of the session is to allow attendees to experience how human factors professionals use virtual environments to support human factors-oriented research and to learn about the exciting work being conducted in this field.

How can we increase awareness and understanding of other cultures using interactive online digital visualizations of past civilizations? In order to answer the above question, this chapter first questions the success of current virtual environments and asks whether they are capable of producing a platform that supports the experience and understanding of place-inscribed culture. To answer this question, a typology of successful virtual environment applications is suggested. These include online communities, virtual realityVirtual environmentVirtual Reality (VR) travel websites, game engines, virtual reality used for training, and virtual reality used as part of therapeutic means to either relax or divert patients, or to cure phobiasPhobias. Impeding the success of virtual environments in terms of technological constraints, lack of evaluation techniques and results, and a lack of content-specific applications that best utilize desktop computing capabilities and respond to user needs. It suggests that much more work needs to be done on not just usable but also useful content. Specifically, there is a large gap in knowledge on what might constitute useful and appropriate virtual travel environments, and how contextual interaction may affect our cultural understanding in these environments.

The effects of the presence of others during a rowing exercise in a virtual reality environment

Purpose This pilot study aimed to (a) investigate opportunities for immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology in communication, physical, and visual rehabilitation by examining the interaction of people without disabilities in a range of structured virtual environments; and (b) validate research protocols that might be used to evaluate the physical, visual, and verbal interaction of users in virtual worlds, and their safety while using the technology. Methods Thirteen adults identifying as people without disability were exposed to VR via a head-mounted display. A video-review method was used to qualitatively code and analyse each participant’s communication, movement, orientation, and support needs. Results All participants oriented to their virtual environments sufficiently to use applications. Their spoken language was effective for interaction, although unconventional social behaviours were also observed. Two participants reported minor adverse reactions consistent with mild cybersickness. Conclusion The results provide insight into the types of environments and characters that support the greatest communicative, physical, and visual interaction in immersive VR. The tested protocols are useful to assess safety when using VR, and to observe communicative, physical, and visual interaction with virtual environments and characters. Implications for future research and use of VR with people with communication, physical and visual disability are discussed.

Advances in Virtual Reality (VR) systems, Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Agent Technology make it possible to design and develop Virtual Training Environments (VTEs), where the trainees can immerse themselves and interact directly with the learning domain. This paper presents the Interaction Specification Workspace (ISW) architecture for the specification and design of virtual environments for training purposes. ISW architecture provides the interaction designer with the capability to specify the training interaction with the virtual environment using the Virtual Reality Multi Flow Graph (VR-MFG) as the underlying interaction specification model. ISW implements a design space, where the processes of interaction specification and design of VTEs take place inside a three-dimensional virtual environment, the objects of which are tools by themselves. Inside this workspace, the designer can associate the abstract objects (the components of the VR-MFG) with “actual” objects of the target virtual environment (kept in a “world” database) and apply a number of agent templates with training capabilities.

One of the technologies used in Industry 4.0 is virtual reality and augmented reality in the industrial applications. These technologies allow: the introduction of the operator in the production process with minimal risk, in the training process (learn manufacturing), the realization of maintenance works with a much more detailed vision of the equipment and the process, the realization of consoles to monitor the manufacturing process and equipment with extended facilities compared to any type of console that has been used before. In this paper we will present an example of a monitoring console using virtual reality. As we will show, the virtual environment accessible through the virtual reality headset can be used as a console with an extended viewing angle in which indicators on the status of the monitored process can be displayed. The indicated values come from IoT equipment with current sensors and temperature sensors. Also, by navigating, using teleport tool, in the virtual environment you can get an overview from several angles of the monitored equipment (in our case a chassis welding workstation) with minimal risk. The environment contains both a modeled image (a 3D sketch of the equipment) and real images of the equipment captured through industrial cameras placed next to the real equipment. In the virtual environment the two “live” video streams are displayed as 2D screens. With this modern monitoring tool, the work standards will be developed that the operator can use in training and in the work process. The system presented in the paper is implemented with an Ocululs Rift kit with headset and touch consoles for capturing the movements of operators and their contacts with virtual objects. The virtual environment is fully implemented using Unity. The system will model workstation for chassis welding. Two IoT devices will be used: one with temperature sensor and the other with current sensor. Two industrial video cameras whit high resolution will also be used to capture images from the workstation. As a result, along with the presentation of the functional system will be presented a model of operational standard made by captures from Unity when exploring the virtual environment.

A real-time integrated calibration system for virtual reality environments has been developed that enables accurate electromagnetic tracking of user motions. Electromagnetic tracking systems suffer degradation in accuracy due to the presence of metals and other electromagnetic distortions in the environment. Calibration of the virtual environment to account for these distortions is essential for VR applications in engineering where correlation between the virtual environment and the physical world is important. The major contribution of the paper is the presentation of a comprehensive methodology for calibrating the VR space, the numerical/mathematical techniques proposed for the calibration, and case studies for calibration accuracy and execution time to enable using these techniques in real time in an integrated setup.

During the last five years, a digital training solution, based on Virtual Reality, for immersive and collaborative experience on a virtual drilling rig, was developed and updated by company’s Well Operations Department in collaboration with Corporate University Infrastructures. This paper will present the digital training environment and its applications, including a discussion of all supporting deployment facilities. The digital Drilling Environment consists in the full digitalization of a last generation offshore semi-submersible drilling rig. On the Virtual Rig, it is possible to access all equipment and workplaces, re-play past operations from a company’s database and interact with a number of safety situations from inductions and drills to the reproduction of a series of real incidental events. The virtual environment is accessible in dedicated 3D rooms, by using Virtual Reality headsets, stand-alone PCs, via lan or by remote internet connections. The new training method, which proved incremental to traditional approaches, turned out to be decisive in supporting long distance education in unprecedented times of sanitary emergency. In particular, the virtual drilling rig ensures an immersive and collaborative experience of rig operational and emergency conditions, while granting a safe and protected environment where knowledge can be quickly achieved. The necessity to focus on new long distance training approaches and the further enhancement of the virtual drilling environment portability were boosted by the particular world situation, which led to the necessity to address, manage and review the overall company’s educational strategies. This paper is made available to discuss suggestions and to present all lessons learnt.

State Social Physique Anxiety (SPA), in contrast to Trait SPA, is triggered by specific situations that elicit SPA. To date, no research has used virtual reality (VR) to recreate a situation that may elicit State SPA. The purpose of this study is to validate a virtual environment (VE) that simulates an anxiogenic situation to induce State SPA in women with obesity and high SPA. The high SPA group consisted of 25 self-identified women living with obesity and high Trait SPA. The low SPA group consisted of 20 self-identified women with low SPA. All participants were immersed in a virtual swimming pool environment for 10 min using a virtual reality headset. After the immersion, State SPA and fear of being negatively judged felt during immersion were measured with self-report questionnaires. A questionnaire assessing unwanted negative side effects was administered before and after the immersion. Using an ANCOVA with Trait SPA as covariate, State SPA was found to be significantly higher in the high SPA group. Fear of being judged negatively was also significantly higher in the high SPA group. Unwanted negative side effects scores did not increase post-immersion in either group. This study documents the validity of a novel VE for inducing State SPA in women with obesity and high SPA.

BackgroundIt is crucial to use innovative tools to gain clinical reasoning skills through experiential learning in pharmacy education, and one of the most effective tools used in this is virtual reality. However, the lack of research that empirically demonstrates the instructional principles of virtual environment design, especially in the clinical setting, has resulted in a significant gap in the current literature.AimIn this study, it was aimed to determine the instructional design principles of a virtual environment for the clinical pharmacy.MethodThe study was conducted as a design‐based research. The data of the study related to three components of the developed virtual reality environment in pharmacy education (VRPE). These components, scenario development interface‐scenario development interface, virtual environment, and scenario, were collected through interviews, observation, document review, and a system usability scale. Instructional design principles for the VRPE were determined through analysis of the collected data.ResultsThe prominent instructional design principles of the VRPE were revealed as immersion, interaction, diversity, flow, aesthetics‐ergonomic‐universal design, informing, and retest availability. The significance of the study was the adoption of a holistic perspective in the design of a virtual reality environment for pharmacy education. In addition, one of the most critical features of the study was eliminating the expertise barrier in virtual environment design. Thus, it was concluded that the VRPE is an extraordinary tool that can be used for pharmacy education to promote experiential learning.

The Reality of Virtual Reality in Echocardiography Education?

Vision in real environments stabilizes balance compared to an eyes-closed condition. For virtual reality to be safe and fully effective in applications such as physical rehabilitation, vision in virtual reality should stabilize balance as much as vision in the real world. Older virtual reality technology was previously found to stabilize balance but by less than half as much as real-world vision. Recent advancements in display technology might allow for vision in virtual reality to be as stabilizing as vision in the real world. This study evaluated whether viewing a virtual environment through the HTC Vive—a new consumer-grade head-mounted display—stabilizes balance, and whether visual stabilization is similar to that provided by real-world vision. Participants viewed the real laboratory or a virtual replica of the laboratory and attempted to maintain an unstable stance with eyes open or closed while standing at one of two viewing distances. Vision was significantly stabilizing in all conditions, but the virtual environment provided less visual stabilization than did the real environment. Regardless of the environment, near viewing led to greater visual stabilization than did far viewing. The smaller stabilizing influence of viewing a virtual compared to real environment might lead to greater risk of falls in virtual reality and smaller gains in physical rehabilitation using virtual reality.