Development of wheelchair experience system with force feedback and experiments of spatial recognition in virtual environment

Abstract

As an application of virtual reality to welfare work, an obstacle experience system was proposed in which a healthy person can experience the situation with a wheelchair. It is considered that such wheelchair experience system is necessary in dealing with the wheelchair's problems such as the development of new wheelchair and other welfare implements, and the design of cities and various facilities. In this research, a wheelchair experience system, which is capable of moving in a virtual environment with vision information and force feedback, was constructed. This paper describes mainly the development of force feedback system and a fundamental experiment about the movement characteristics with spatial recognition. Experiments of distance assessing by movement are done in the real and virtual environment with the attention to concept of sensory integration and active to evaluate the necessary of force feedback. The results of the experiment are discussed and the effectiveness of present system is inspected.