CHS: Small: Enabling Accessibility of Virtual Reality for Persons with Balance Impairments

虚拟现实（VR）在头戴式显示器（HMD）中呈现3D计算机图形和声音，使用户感觉好像他们在另一个地方。尽管消费者级别的HMD是负担得起的，足以使大的用户群受益，但是这些设备对于许多具有平衡障碍的人（诸如老年人、患有多发性硬化症、帕金森氏症或中风的人）是不可用的。目前，沉浸式VR应用程序，如教育，健身，康复和娱乐，不适合平衡障碍的用户。为了满足这一需求，研究团队将使用视觉、音频和触摸反馈的组合来改善VR中的平衡。虽然这些方法在现实中得到了有效的应用，但它们在VR中的测试很少，而且还不知道最有效的反馈组合是什么。如果VR不平衡问题可以得到缓解，有平衡障碍的人可能更容易从消费者VR中受益。该项目还将影响残疾人的社区外展，因为调查人员计划在残疾人支持小组和研讨会上发表演讲，进一步教育残疾人了解VR。该项目还将增加代表性不足的少数民族学生参与研究，因为德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校59%以上的学生来自高等教育中代表性不足的群体。该项目的总体目标是研究多模式技术，以改善平衡障碍者（如老年人和神经系统疾病患者）在VR中的平衡。基于研究小组的初步研究，中心假设是：来自多模态反馈技术组合的感官线索，例如视觉静态休息框架，姿势的听觉反馈，以及来自振动触觉带的姿势触觉反馈，将有助于减轻不平衡效应，这取决于不平衡的原因。这个想法将是由于几个因素（例如，临床状况、年龄），并基于该分组解释VR中的平衡受损人类参与者的体验。最终，这项研究将产生一套经过验证的VR步态数据和开源工具，使VR更容易为平衡障碍者所用，从而提高他们的生活质量。该项目具有创造性和原创性，因为之前很少有研究表明VR为什么会导致不平衡以及它如何影响平衡障碍的人，因此，很少有作品探索这个问题的解决方案。该项目具有潜在的变革性，因为它可能会颠覆VR中用户交互的公认理论和观点，特别是对于有平衡障碍的人。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Virtual Reality (VR) renders 3D computer graphics and sound in head mounted displays (HMDs) to make users feel as though they are in another place. Although consumer level HMDs are affordable enough to benefit a large user base, these devices are not accessible for many persons with balance impairments, such as elderly persons, persons with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, or stroke. Currently, immersive VR applications, such as education, physical fitness, rehabilitation, and entertainment, are not accessible to users with balance impairments. To address this need, the team of researchers will use a combination of visual, audio, and touch feedback to improve balance in VR. Although these methods have been effectively used in reality, they have minimally been tested in VR and it is unknown what the most effective combination of feedbacks are. If VR imbalance issues can be mitigated, persons with balance impairments may be able to more readily benefit from consumer VR. The project will also impact community outreach for persons with disabilities in that the investigators plan to give lectures at support groups and symposia on disabilities that will further educate persons with disabilities about VR. The project will also increase involvement of underrepresented minority students in research, because more than 59% of The University of Texas at San Antonio's students come from groups underrepresented in higher education. The overall objective of this project is to investigate multimodal techniques to improve balance in VR for persons with balance impairments, such as elderly persons and persons with neurological disorders. Based on the research team's preliminary studies, the central hypothesis is: sensory cues from a combination of multimodal feedback techniques, such as a visual static rest frame, auditory feedback on posture, and tactile feedback on posture from a vibro-tactile belt, will help to mitigate the imbalance effects, depending upon the cause of the imbalance. The idea will be to separately group the target populations due to several factors (e.g., clinical condition, age) and interpret the balance impaired human participants' experiences in VR based on that grouping. Ultimately, this research will result in a set of validated, gait-in-VR data and open-source tools that will make VR more accessible for persons with balance impairments, improving their quality of life. The project is creative and original because there has been minimal previous research into why VR causes imbalance and how it affects persons with balance impairments and hence, few works have explored solutions to this problem. The project is potentially transformative because it may disrupt accepted theories and perspectives of user interaction in VR, especially for persons with balance impairments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.