Bidirectional Infection Experiences in a Virtual Environment

摘要

Pathogenic infection is usually invisible. Thus, we hardly care of preventing it in the daily life. We aimed to develop a virtual reality system to experience bidirectional infections using vision and tactile sensations; Users are infected by an avatar, and they do infect the avatar. When the avatar coughs toward a user, a cloud of visualized pathogen-droplets jet out and strike the user and objects on a table. At the same time, vibrations are presented to the user's chest. When the user coughs toward the avatar, the cough was detected by a throat microphone, and a cloud of visualized pathogen jets out. The avatar tries to avoid it unpleasantly, but infected. He is getting sick in bad face color. This system enables us to experience pathogenic infection with multimodal sensations in both perspectives (infected and infecting). Thus, it may contribute to increasing user's knowledge of infection and to facilitating prevention behaviors such as wearing a hygiene mask.