Multisensory cues facilitate coordination of stepping movements with a virtual reality avatar

06/24/2019
by   Omar Khan, et al.
0

The effectiveness of simple sensory cues for retraining gait have been demonstrated, yet the feasibility of humanoid avatars for entrainment have yet to be investigated. Here, we describe the development of a novel method of visually cued training, in the form of a virtual partner, and investigate its ability to provide movement guidance in the form of stepping. Real stepping movements were mapped onto an avatar using motion capture data. The trajectory of one of the avatar step cycles was then accelerated or decelerated by 15 create a perturbation. Healthy participants were motion captured while instructed to step in time to the avatar's movements, as viewed through a virtual reality headset. Step onset times were used to measure the timing errors (asynchronies) between them. Participants completed either a visual-only condition, or auditory-visual with footstep sounds included. Participants' asynchronies exhibited slow drift in the Visual-Only condition, but became stable in the Auditory-Visual condition. Moreover, we observed a clear corrective response to the phase perturbation in both auditory-visual conditions. We conclude that an avatar's movements can be used to influence a person's own gait, but should include relevant auditory cues congruent with the movement to ensure a suitable accuracy is achieved.

READ FULL TEXT

page 30

page 31

page 32

page 33

page 34

page 35

research
09/13/2022

A virtual reality-based method for examining audiovisual prosody perception

Prosody plays a vital role in verbal communication. Acoustic cues of pro...
research
11/27/2020

Human-in-the-loop Cueing Strategy for Gait Rehabilitation

External feedback in the form of visual, auditory and tactile cues has b...
research
10/06/2017

Rotation Blurring: Use of Artificial Blurring to Reduce Cybersickness in Virtual Reality First Person Shooters

Users of Virtual Reality (VR) systems often experience vection, the perc...
research
01/23/2023

Velocity-Based LOD Reduction in Virtual Reality: A Psychometric Approach

Virtual Reality headsets enable users to explore the environment by perf...
research
11/06/2020

Flexible Virtual Reality System for Neurorehabilitation and Quality of Life Improvement

As life expectancy is mostly increasing, the incidence of many neurologi...
research
05/24/2023

A Virtual Reality Tool for Representing, Visualizing and Updating Deep Learning Models

Deep learning is ubiquitous, but its lack of transparency limits its imp...

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset