Perturbations using an Immersive Head Mounted Display. Lara Riem1, Jacob ... VR has also been used to induce trips when training for fall correction [9], and to ...
Inducing Compensatory Changes in Gait Similar to External Perturbations using an Immersive Head Mounted Display Lara Riem1, Jacob Van Dehy1, Tanya Onushko1, Scott Beardsley1 1
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
ABSTRACT Understanding the sensorimotor control mechanisms that mediate gait compensation during environmental perturbation is a crucial step in developing tailored rehabilitative therapies to restore ambulation in patient populations. Current methods to evaluate the effects of environmental perturbations involve costly systems that physically perturb patients to elicit a compensatory response. Studies have shown that visual feedback alone can elicit dramatic changes in gait; however, the impact of fully immersive visual feedback is not well studied. Here we examined whether a low cost immersive virtual reality (VR) system can elicit perturbation responses similar to a physical disruption. We examined the responses of 11 subjects as they walked through a VR environment consisting of a bridge spanning a lake. While subjects walked on a treadmill mounted to a 6 degree-of-freedom motion base, pseudorandom roll perturbations (3, 6, 11 deg.) were applied visually to the bridge with (VP trials) and without (V trials) the corresponding physical displacement of the motion base. Significant differences were found between normal (unperturbed) walking and normal walking in the VR environment (p
