The Biomechanical Evaluation of a Human-Robot Collaborative Task in a Physically Interactive Virtual Reality Simulation Testbed

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 403-407
Author(s):  
Manoj Srinivasan ◽  
Syed T. Mubarrat ◽  
Quentin Humphrey ◽  
Thomas Chen ◽  
Kieran Binkley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Center Of Pressure ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Movement Kinematics ◽  
Industrial Training ◽  
Real Objects ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Effective Transfer

In this study, we developed a low-cost simulated testbed of a physically interactive virtual reality (VR) system and evaluated its efficacy as an occupational virtual trainer for human-robot collaborative (HRC) tasks. The VR system could be implemented in industrial training applications for sensorimotor skill acquisitions and identifying potential task-, robot-, and human-induced hazards in the industrial environments. One of the challenges in designing and implementing such simulation testbed is the effective integration of virtual and real objects and environment, including human movement biomechanics. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the movement kinematics (joint angles) and kinetics (center of pressure) of the human participants while performing pick-and-place lifting tasks with and without using a physically interactive VR testbed. Results showed marginal differences in human movement kinematics and kinetics between real and virtual environment tasks, suggesting the effective transfer of training benefits from VR to real-life situations.

What’s In It for Me?

2013 ◽  
pp. 91-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Grassian ◽  
Rhonda Trueman
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Information Sharing ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Knowledge Innovation ◽  
3D Virtual World

Virtual worlds offer synchronous (simultaneous) real life participation through virtual reality, combining the two to provide convenient and low-cost options for librarians’ professional development. This chapter explores the use of virtual worlds for meetings, training, conferences, discussions, mentoring, networking, and peer-to-peer information sharing, with a focus on the 3D virtual world of Second Life. Definitions of “professional development” and “virtual worlds” precede discussion of the issues surrounding the use of this type of environment for a variety of training events and activities to support and encourage ongoing expansion of knowledge, innovation, and creativity among librarians. This chapter also includes information about planning and implementing professional development sessions in this arena, along with information on effective methods for publicizing these activities for parties interested in using virtual worlds for professional development. For those interested in attending professional development opportunities in virtual worlds, the chapter provides information on how to discover and choose useful activities and events in virtual worlds.

What's In It for Me?

2016 ◽  
pp. 1974-1992
Author(s):  
Esther Grassian ◽  
Rhonda Trueman
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Information Sharing ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Knowledge Innovation ◽  
3D Virtual World

Virtual worlds offer synchronous (simultaneous) real life participation through virtual reality, combining the two to provide convenient and low-cost options for librarians' professional development. This chapter explores the use of virtual worlds for meetings, training, conferences, discussions, mentoring, networking, and peer-to-peer information sharing, with a focus on the 3D virtual world of Second Life. Definitions of “professional development” and “virtual worlds” precede discussion of the issues surrounding the use of this type of environment for a variety of training events and activities to support and encourage ongoing expansion of knowledge, innovation, and creativity among librarians. This chapter also includes information about planning and implementing professional development sessions in this arena, along with information on effective methods for publicizing these activities for parties interested in using virtual worlds for professional development. For those interested in attending professional development opportunities in virtual worlds, the chapter provides information on how to discover and choose useful activities and events in virtual worlds.

scholarly journals A LOW-COST AND LIGHTWEIGHT 3D INTERACTIVE REAL ESTATE-PURPOSED INDOOR VIRTUAL REALITY APPLICATION

2017 ◽  
Vol IV-4/W4 ◽  
pp. 307-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Ozacar ◽  
Y. Ortakci ◽  
I. Kahraman ◽  
R. Durgut ◽  
I. R. Karas
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Indoor Environments ◽  
Interior Architecture ◽  
Life Scale ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Interactive 3D ◽  
Virtual Reality Application

Interactive 3D architectural indoor design have been more popular after it benefited from Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. VR brings computer-generated 3D content to real life scale and enable users to observe immersive indoor environments so that users can directly modify it. This opportunity enables buyers to purchase a property off-the-plan cheaper through virtual models. Instead of showing property through 2D plan or renders, this visualized interior architecture of an on-sale unbuilt property is demonstrated beforehand so that the investors have an impression as if they were in the physical building. However, current applications either use highly resource consuming software, or are non-interactive, or requires specialist to create such environments. In this study, we have created a real-estate purposed low-cost high quality fully interactive VR application that provides a realistic interior architecture of the property by using free and lightweight software: Sweet Home 3D and Unity. A preliminary study showed that participants generally liked proposed real estate-purposed VR application, and it satisfied the expectation of the property buyers.

Street Crossing by Typically Developed Children in Real and Virtual Environments

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orit Bart ◽  
Noomi Katz ◽  
Patrice L. Weiss ◽  
Naomi Josman
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Training Group ◽  
After School ◽  
Control Group ◽  
The Real ◽  
Street Crossing ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Serious Injury

Independent street crossing is a necessary skill for children to have so they can engage in different occupations and complete tasks such as arriving at school or after-school activities. Without the appropriate opportunities to practice and master street crossing, children's participation will be incomplete and they will not be able to attain their physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials. Training children in safe street crossing is especially important because pedestrian injury is the second leading cause of death and serious injury among children between 5 and 14 years old. The existing methods for teaching children how to cross a street safely are difficult to transfer to real-life situations. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual reality environment in teaching children how to cross a street safely. Eighty-six typical children (55 girls and 31 boys) between 7 and 12 years old participated in the study. The children who failed the virtual reality test were randomly assigned to training and control groups. The children were observed while crossing a real street and tested within the virtual environment both before and after the virtual reality training. Results indicate that children in the training group significantly improved their street crossing abilities in both the virtual reality simulation and the real street crossing in comparison to the control group. Street crossing became safer with increasing age, but no differences were found between boys and girls. This low-cost and readily available street crossing simulation had a positive effect on children's street crossing behavior in the real environment and on their self-reported satisfaction. These results provide support for the potential of training in a virtual street crossing simulation to transfer to actual street crossing.

The Comparison of a Virtual Reality Headset and Force plate to Investigate Human Postural Control (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Sylcott ◽  
Chia-Cheng Lin ◽  
Keith Williams ◽  
Mark Hinderaker
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Postural Control ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Center Of Pressure ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Intraclass Correlation ◽  
Force Plate ◽  
Retest Reliability ◽  
Position Data ◽  
Test Retest Reliability

BACKGROUND Accurately measuring postural sway is an important part of balance assessment and rehabilitation. While force plates give accurate measurements, their cost and space requirements make their use impractical in many situations. OBJECTIVE The work presented here is aimed at addressing this issue by validating a virtual reality (VR) headset as a relatively low-cost alternative for postural sway measurement. The HTC Vive (VR) headset has built-in sensors that allow for position and orientation tracking making it a potentially effective tool for balance assessments. METHODS Participants in this study were asked to stand upright on a force plate (Neurocom platform) while wearing the HTC ViveTM. Position data was collected from the headset and force plate simultaneously as participants experienced a custom-built VR environment that covered their entire field of view. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was used to examined the test-retest reliability on the postural control variables, including normalized path length (NPL), root-mean-square (RMS), and peak-to-peak (P2P), computed from the VR position output and the center of pressure (COP) data from the force plate. Liner regression were used to investigate the correlation between the VR and force plate measurements. RESULTS Results showed that the test-retest reliability of VR headset was similar to COP in RMS and P2P, ranging from .285 to .636 in VR and .228 to .759. Linear regression between VR and COP measures showed significant correlation in RMS and P2P. CONCLUSIONS Based on our results, the VR headset has potential for use in postural control measurements. However, further development of software and testing protocols for balance assessments is needed.

Modulation of Visually Evoked Movement Responses in Moving Virtual Environments

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p6086 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 652-663
Author(s):  
Rebecca J Reed-Jones ◽  
Lori Ann Vallis
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Virtual Reality Technology ◽  
Virtual Scene ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Visual Motion Cues ◽  
Visual Perturbation

Virtual-reality technology is being increasingly used to understand how humans perceive and act in the moving world around them. What is currently not clear is how virtual reality technology is perceived by human participants and what virtual scenes are effective in evoking movement responses to visual stimuli. We investigated the effect of virtual-scene context on human responses to a virtual visual perturbation. We hypothesised that exposure to a natural scene that matched the visual expectancies of the natural world would create a perceptual set towards presence, and thus visual guidance of body movement in a subsequently presented virtual scene. Results supported this hypothesis; responses to a virtual visual perturbation presented in an ambiguous virtual scene were increased when participants first viewed a scene that consisted of natural landmarks which provided ‘real-world’ visual motion cues. Further research in this area will provide a basis of knowledge for the effective use of this technology in the study of human movement responses.

PyDOSS: An open-source Python-based communicable disease outbreak surveillance system designed and used in a COVID-19 community care facility (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Fang ◽  
Jonathan Kia-Sheng Phua ◽  
Terrence Chiew ◽  
Daniel De-Liang Loh ◽  
Lincoln Ming Han Liow ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Surveillance System ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Healthcare Team ◽  
Increased Risk

BACKGROUND During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, community care facilities (CCF) were set up as temporary out-of-hospital isolation facilities to contain the surge of cases in Singapore. Confined living spaces within CCFs posed an increased risk of communicable disease spread among residents. OBJECTIVE This inspired our healthcare team managing a CCF operation to design a low-cost communicable disease outbreak surveillance system (CDOSS). METHODS Our CDOSS was designed with the following considerations: (1) comprehensiveness, (2) efficiency through passive reconnoitering from electronic medical record (EMR) data, (3) ability to provide spatiotemporal insights, (4) low-cost and (5) ease of use. We used Python to develop a lightweight application – Python-based Communicable Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (PyDOSS) – that was able perform syndromic surveillance and fever monitoring. With minimal user actions, its data pipeline would generate daily control charts and geospatial heat maps of cases from raw EMR data and logged vital signs. PyDOSS was successfully implemented as part of our CCF workflow. We also simulated a gastroenteritis (GE) outbreak to test the effectiveness of the system. RESULTS PyDOSS was used throughout the entire duration of operation; the output was reviewed daily by senior management. No disease outbreaks were identified during our medical operation. In the simulated GE outbreak, PyDOSS was able to effectively detect an outbreak within 24 hours and provided information about cluster progression which could aid in contact tracing. The code for a stock version of PyDOSS has been made publicly available. CONCLUSIONS PyDOSS is an effective surveillance system which was successfully implemented in a real-life medical operation. With the system developed using open-source technology and the code made freely available, it significantly reduces the cost of developing and operating CDOSS and may be useful for similar temporary medical operations, or in resource-limited settings.

scholarly journals Assessment of Wheelchair Propulsion Performance in an Immersive Virtual Reality Simulator

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (15) ◽  
pp. 8016
Author(s):  
Yu-Sheng Yang ◽  
Alicia M. Koontz ◽  
Yu-Hsuan Hsiao ◽  
Cheng-Tang Pan ◽  
Jyh-Jong Chang
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Spinal Cord Injuries ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Wheelchair Propulsion ◽  
Subjective Data ◽  
Wheelchair Users ◽  
Head Mounted Display ◽  
Propulsion Performance

Maneuvering a wheelchair is an important necessity for the everyday life and social activities of people with a range of physical disabilities. However, in real life, wheelchair users face several common challenges: articulate steering, spatial relationships, and negotiating obstacles. Therefore, our research group has developed a head-mounted display (HMD)-based intuitive virtual reality (VR) stimulator for wheelchair propulsion. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and efficacy of this VR stimulator for wheelchair propulsion performance. Twenty manual wheelchair users (16 men and 4 women) with spinal cord injuries ranging from T8 to L2 participated in this study. The differences in wheelchair propulsion kinematics between immersive and non-immersive VR environments were assessed using a 3D motion analysis system. Subjective data of the HMD-based intuitive VR stimulator were collected with a Presence Questionnaire and individual semi-structured interview at the end of the trial. Results indicated that propulsion performance was very similar in terms of start angle (p = 0.34), end angle (p = 0.46), stroke angle (p = 0.76), and shoulder movement (p = 0.66) between immersive and non-immersive VR environments. In the VR episode featuring an uphill journey, an increase in propulsion speed (p < 0.01) and cadence (p < 0.01) were found, as well as a greater trunk forward inclination (p = 0.01). Qualitative interviews showed that this VR simulator made an attractive, novel impression and therefore demonstrated the potential as a tool for stimulating training motivation. This HMD-based intuitive VR stimulator can be an effective resource to enhance wheelchair maneuverability experiences.

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