Scientific and technological reports

Virtual Reality Technologies

The goal of a virtual reality (VR) system is to place the user in a synthetically generated three-dimensional environment, that he or she can directly manipulate. Ideally, users cease to think of themselves as interacting with a computer; they think of themselves as interacting with the environment it has created. Special input and output devices allow a user to interact with a virtual environment. These capture the user’s motion and gestures and produce the sensory feedback from the synthetic environment to the user’s vision, hearing and touch.

Telecommunications networks are rapidly advancing from public telephone service to interactive multimedia services. These high bandwidth interactive multimedia networks will deliver a broad range of the activities of daily living into the home and workplace. These new services will make use of VR technology to provide new types of services and applications in the telecommunications marketplace.

Applications for Disabled People

VR technology is of inherent interest to those with disabilities for four reasons (Lanier 1992, Middleton 1992):

It allows them to perceive what they might not otherwise be able to since it can gather information in a sensory modality in which they are impaired and deliver it to one where they are not.
It can render a world in a customised manner - this can help people to start learning activities in a simplified form before transferring their skills to the more complex real world. This approach has been used with children who have learning difficulties (Burns 1993).
VR technology has to be adaptable to the individual senses and capabilities of the user if it is to provide a satisfactory illusion of reality. This means that well-designed VR devices are inherently adaptable to a wide range of individual needs.
Users of networked virtual environments will have control over the way in which they project themselves to others. This means that those with special needs can interact with other users on an equal footing.

Virtual Reality techniques can also be used in rehabilitation technology through compens-ation of motor and sensory deficits, allowing a disabled person to explore and manipulate new environments. It therefore has the potential to be used as a training aid for skills such as spatial co-ordination and orientation.

Limitations

As intriguing as Virtual Reality is, today the enabling technology is still crude. Major technological hurdles exist in the area of tracking a person’s motion and position in a non-intrusive way, in displaying stereo colour images with a high definition of the scene covering the user’s peripheral vision, and in the area of image generation speed for a smooth and realistic animation of the scene. Touch and the construction of physical images, to support the visual images in virtual environments still has far to go in the production of realistic sensations.

The Way Forward

Virtual reality and telecommunications are both fields that will evolve and grow very rapidly between now and the end of the century. Both are of potential benefit for people with special needs. To fully realise these benefits there is a pressing need to carry out the following:

Place VR for people with special needs high on the research agendas of key industry players, and of academic research funding and policy making bodies.
Bring together VR with computing, communications and rehabilitation technology.
Increase fundamental research into human factors and technical aspects of virtual interfaces.
Provide concept demonstrators for publicity and preliminary evaluations.

Applications that are currently stand alone, will, in the future, be supported on high bandwidth public multimedia networks that are arising out of the integration of telecommunication and computing. In coming together VR and telecommunications technology has much to offer people with special needs. One of the criticisms most frequently made of VR is that it has very few genuinely useful applications for a field that generates so much attention. VR derived devices and services designed for people with special needs could provide an early opportunity for the field to shake off this image.

References

Burns, S. (1993) Living in the real world. Education Computing and Technology, 62-63, January 1993.

Lanier, J. (1992) Virtual reality and persons with disabilities. Proceedings of Virtual Reality and Persons with Disabilities, Los Angeles, 18-21 March 1992. California: Office of Disabled Student Services, California State University.

Middleton, T. (1992) Matching virtual reality solutions to special needs. Proceedings of Virtual Reality and Persons with Disabilities, Los Angeles, 18-21 March 1992. California: Office of Disabled Student Services, California State University.

November 1995