VRGait: An Immersive Virtual Reality System for Gait-Specific Neurorehabilitation and Therapy
European Congress of NeuroRehabilitation 2017: ECNR2017, Lausanne, (2017)Abstract
Fortunately, physiotherapy and repetitive movement during exercises allows to regain motor functions lost by neurological injuries, i.e., caused by strokes. Exercising is exhausting and patients’ motivation plays a central role in the effectiveness or such therapies. Unfortunately, dedicated therapy equipment often requires to restrict users or to be setup in lesser attractive environments due to, e.g., building statics. In addition, such systems currently do not exploit the potential of adaptive training stimuli based on movement mimicry. We introduce first results of a VR based gait rehabilitation system: VRGait immerses patients into alternative virtual environments and maps their movements on the therapy device to movements in the virtual worlds (see Figure 1). VRGait’s goals are to strengthen therapy effectiveness (1) by increased motivation from inspiring walking escapes (think beach or mountain scenes) and gamified tasks and (2) by exploiting motor mimicry caused by their controlled virtual avatars or counterparts walking together with them.
