Design, test and experimental validation of a VR treadmill walking compensation device

Abstract

Virtual Reality has known exponential development in the recent years and presents important research vectors for the years to come. One major issue, unresolved yet, remains the totally immersion feeling in Virtual Environment (VE) and one of it's most important aspects still to be researched is locomotion in VE. In this direction the authors propose a bidirectional active treadmill based device adapted from an ordinary unidirectional treadmill. The device is used for researching a way to walk smoothly and in an undisturbed fashion on a very limited surface area. For controlling the treadmill's speed and direction the authors propose two simple algorithms. The implementation of the algorithms, experimental setup, tests and results are presented as well. The author's discussion including a critical perspective about the results is also reported. The final part concludes this paper with the authors' perspective and future vectors to be implemented and researched still. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.