WALKING COMPENSATION TREADMILL BASED SYSTEM: DEVICE, ENVIRONMENT AND TESTING METHOD

摘要

Virtual Reality (VR) is an innovative domain that has known exponential development in the last years. One major issue still remaining unresolved is navigation inside Virtual Environments (VEs). Following this direction the authors propose a bidirectional active treadmill based system correlated with a VE model, to provide a complete tool for VR navigation. The treadmill based interface combined with a noninvasive optical tracking method, allows a natural and smooth locomotion, in an undisturbed fashion, on a limited surface area. In order to establish the adequate control of the system during locomotion, two control methods were implemented and tested during a VE task. The system's architecture, testing method, test results and the author's discussion are also reported. The final part concludes with the authors' perspectives and development issues to still be researched.