Authors:
Yves Dupuis
;
Jean-Luc Impagliazzo
;
Cédric Anthierens
and
Dominique Millet
Affiliation:
LISMMA (EA 2336) – LIISIM group SUPMECA TOULON, France
Keyword(s):
Generic interface, Human Gait, Mechatronics, Movement Perception, Virtual Reality.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Human-Robots Interfaces
;
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Robotics and Automation
;
Virtual Environment, Virtual and Augmented Reality
Abstract:
This paper deals with the design of a 1D sensorial and driving locomotion interface for Virtual Reality applications able to simulate natural walking-in-place. The aim is to provide an unlimited roaming in a virtual world while physically walking in a constrained area. Most of existing locomotion interfaces do not allow to walk naturally in terms of steps length and frequency. Furthermore, we define the term “natural walking” in two complementary ways. The first one is devoted to biomechanical features of human walking, ie the position, speed and acceleration of human body parts. The second one is related to self-movement perception, namely the integration of multi-sensorial information such as kinaesthetic, visual and vestibular information. So, we designed our mechatronical interface using biomechanical and sensorial data of human walking. The interface is equipped with sensors in order to measure floor reaction forces onto the pedals and a video tracking device to measure the curr
ent positions of user’s feet. Since the program has been written in C++ language, it is easy to create new automata to control the interface for other applications such as running. Finally, the implementation of the interface with the virtual environment is described.
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