Interfacing tangible input devices to a 3D virtual environment for users with special needs

摘要

Virtual environments have been used over the last ten years for teaching life skills to children with learning disabilities and/or physical disabilities. They are now being considered as a means of providing practical training of everyday tasks for adults rehabilitating following a stroke. However, current desktop virtual reality systems require the use of a mouse and keyboard or joystick to interact with the VE, and this excludes a high percentage of users in particular, those with special needs. Progressive research at the University of Nottingham is being carried out to examine and develop solutions for interfacing alternative input devices to facilitate greater accessibility to virtual environments. Preliminary studies have shown that users with special needs can more successfully interact with objects in a virtual environment using direct manipulation devices compared with a standard mouse input, and that real objects are more acceptable than toy replicas. However, the current devices are dedicated to performing a single task and so work is continuing to improve flexibility in the interface system to facilitate performance of a range of virtual environment tasks.