Tele-immersive environments for rehabilitation activities: an empirical study on proprioception

摘要

Those with proprioceptive impairments can use their other senses as the proprioceptive feedback. We hypothesize that tele-immersion systems can aid in this supplemented proprioception by providing novel visual perspectives of one's own body. In particular we are interested as to whether the real-time 3D reconstructions used in tele-immersive systems are better or worse than conventional 2D views (i.e. video) with regards to aiding a task requiring proprioception. The objective of this study is to investigate the stated hypothesis by quantifying and ranking the various visual and auditory cues available in a tele-immersive system as they are used during an assigned task. The paper briefly describes a portable immersive VR system, our methodology for quantifying task performance, and results from our experiments with wheelchair basketball athletes.