Preliminary Findings About an Office Chair as a Low-Threshold Treadmill Substitute

Abstract

A treadmill is a peripheral device enabling players in an immersive virtual world a rather intuitive way to move around. The body is fixed and secured around the waist whilst the legs can freely simulate a walking or even running movement. The hands usually hold controllers to interact with the virtual world. Such a human machine interaction is powerful and at the same time demands a high degree of concentration. Usually, a learning phase is required for players that are not familiarized with such a concept. In a project with children with special needs this challenge has prevented an easy introduction of a treadmill. To overcome this problem the children were then asked to use the treadmill without VR-glasses. In a second step VR-glasses were introduced while the children were sitting on a chair. The final step combined then treadmill and glasses but with limited success. This paper introduces another approach based on an ordinary office chair to facilitate and enabling a stepwise learning experience. Children with special needs are equipped with additional tracked markers at their feet. If the children are shuffling feet a movement is calculated. In such a way a risk-free movement in a virtual world is enabled without any costly equipment. At the same time this experience can be considered a promising intermediate step towards the use of a treadmill which will open an even better immersive experience. This paper gives an introduction of the experimental setup and disseminates preliminary findings.