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Enabling Unconstrained Omnidirectional Walking Through Virtual Environments: An Overview of the CyberWalk Project

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Human Walking in Virtual Environments

Abstract

The CyberWalk treadmill is the first truly omnidirectional treadmill of its size that allows for near natural walking through arbitrarily large Virtual Environments. The platform represents advances in treadmill and virtual reality technology and engineering, but it is also a major step towards having a single setup that allows the study of human locomotion and its many facets. This chapter focuses on the human behavioral research that was conducted to understand human locomotion from the perspective of specifying design criteria for the CyberWalk. The first part of this chapter describes research on the biomechanics of human walking, in particular, the nature of natural unconstrained walking and the effects of treadmill walking on characteristics of gait. The second part of this chapter describes the multisensory nature of walking, with a focus on the integration of vestibular and proprioceptive information during walking. The third part of this chapter describes research on large-scale human navigation and identifies possible causes for the human tendency to veer from a straight path, and even walk in circles when no external references are made available. The chapter concludes with a summary description of the features of the CyberWalk platform that were informed by this collection of research findings and briefly highlights the current and future scientific potential for this platform.

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Acknowledgments

The work reported in this chapter was funded by the European 6th Framework Programme, CyberWalk (FP6-511092). We would like to thank Jan Souman for his invaluable contributions to the work reported in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Multisensory Perception and Action Group, Tübingen, Germany

    Ilja Frissen, Jennifer L. Campos, Manish Sreenivasa & Marc O. Ernst

  2. LUNAM Université, CNRS, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, IRCCyN (Institut de Recherche en Communications et Cybernétique de Nantes), 1 rue de la Noë, BP 92101, 44321 , Nantes Cedex 3, France

    Ilja Frissen

  3. Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Multisensory Perception and Action Group, Tübingen, Germany

    Jennifer L. Campos

  4. iDAPT, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Jennifer L. Campos

  5. Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Jennifer L. Campos

  6. Nakamura Laboratory, Department of Mechano-Informatics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Manish Sreenivasa

  7. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

    Marc O. Ernst

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  1. Ilja Frissen
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  4. Marc O. Ernst
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Correspondence to Ilja Frissen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Würzburg, Oswald-Külpe-Weg 82, Würzburg, 97074, Germany

    Frank Steinicke

  2. Drexel University, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineerin, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Yon Visell

  3. University of Toronto,  Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Univ, University Ave 550, Toronto, M5G 2A2, Ontario, Canada

    Jennifer Campos

  4. Computer Science and Control (INRIA), National Institute for Research in, Campus de Beaulie, Rennes Cedex, 35042, France

    Anatole Lécuyer

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Frissen, I., Campos, J., Sreenivasa, M., Ernst, M. (2013). Enabling Unconstrained Omnidirectional Walking Through Virtual Environments: An Overview of the CyberWalk Project. In: Steinicke, F., Visell, Y., Campos, J., Lécuyer, A. (eds) Human Walking in Virtual Environments. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8432-6_6

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