Analysis of the Treadmill Utilization for the Development of a Virtual Reality Walking Interface

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has been used in various fields and recent applications of virtual reality technology include education, medicine, science, and tourism. In particular, virtual reality technology has been used most for experience based virtual reality contents and game contents. Sometimes called Virtual Environments (VE), it has drawn much attention in the last few years due to extensive media coverage however few people really know what VR is, what its basic principles and its open problems are. One of the important issues in developing such virtual reality experience contents is human computer interface which can be designed and operated in such a way to meet a purpose such as walking over long distances. However, virtual reality technology with the use of tracking devices and cabling has has until recently restricted these abilities of users. Walking interface provides an interactive human-computer interaction that conveys proper walking sense to users by receiving and processing walking speed of users. This paper studies walking interface hardware out of controls under virtual environment that provides users with the ability to experience real-life walking actions. Specifically, this study aims to examine the existing walking interface and to introduce treadmill based simple biped ambulation interface using pressure mode sensor. Walking interface enables researchers to seek space in virtual environment by using natural walking which can substitute the above interface. And the use of interface such as joystick is used to seek space in virtual environment. The stepping actions are performed on top of a treadmill with embedded grid of switch sensors that detect footfalls pressure. The overall state of the treadmill based interface is scanned at a rate of 100Hz which can deliver real-time visual feedback reaction to user actions and steps.