Sense of Embodiment Inducement for People with Reduced Lower-body Mobility and Sensations with Partial-Visuomotor Stimulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel upper-body motion tracking method to induce the Sense of Embodiment in VR for individuals with reduced lower-body mobility, using partial-visuomotor stimulation to enhance user experience.

Contribution

It presents a new partial-visuomotor technique combining button control and upper motion tracking to induce embodiment in VR for PRLMS users, addressing limitations of existing methods.

Findings

Positive subjective response to partial-visuomotor stimulation

Enhanced Sense of Embodiment in asynchronous VR experience

Feasibility of upper-body motion tracking for PRLMS

Abstract

To induce the Sense of Embodiment~(SoE) on the virtual 3D avatar during a Virtual Reality~(VR) walking scenario, VR interfaces have employed the visuotactile or visuomotor approaches. However, people with reduced lower-body mobility and sensation~(PRLMS) who are incapable of feeling or moving their legs would find this task extremely challenging. Here, we propose an upper-body motion tracking-based partial-visuomotor technique to induce SoE and positive feedback for PRLMS patients. We design partial-visuomotor stimulation consisting of two distinctive inputs~(\textit{Button Control} \& \textit{Upper Motion tracking}) and outputs~(\textit{wheelchair motion} \& \textit{Gait Motion}). The preliminary user study was conducted to explore subjective preference with qualitative feedback. From the qualitative study result, we observed the positive response on the partial-visuomotor regarding SoE in the asynchronous VR experience for PRLMS.