Individuals may use their wheelchair to play VR games, explore three-dimensional, visual worlds and take part in virtual social events, even if they do not master the hand- or head- inputs that are common for VR.
At the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems we presented a case-story on our development of a low-cost, do-it-yourself, wheelchair locomotion-device, which allows navigation in VR. More than 50 people, including 9 wheelchair users, participated in the evaluations of three prototypes and a number of games developed for them.
Initially, cybersickness turned out to be a problem, but when we changed to an electric wheelchair instead of a manual and fine-tuned the controls this discomfort was remarkably reduced.
We suggest using this device for gaming, training, interaction design, accessibility studies and the operation of robots.
Watch this 30 sec. video to learn more:
More information here.
Cachet Researchers:
John Paulin Hansen and Katsumi Minakata, DTU Management
Alexandre Alapetite, Alexandra Institute
DTU Students:
Sara Amdi Harild & Astrid Kofod Trudslev, Design and Innovation bachelors, DTU.
This research has been supported by the Bevica Foundation.