2019/06/20 by Mahmoud Habibnezhad, Jay Puckett, Habibnezhad, Mahmoud +6
Computer Science · Health Professions · Medicine · #Balance, Gait, and Falls Prevention #Effects of Vibration on Health #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #cs.HC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1906.08670
36th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC 2019)
arxiv created 2019/06/20 · openalex publication_date 2019/06/20 · arxiv updated 2019/06/21 · openalex created_date 2022/07/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is difficult to conduct training and evaluate workers' postural performance by using the actual job site environment due to safety concerns. Virtual reality (VR) provides an alternative to create immersive working environments without significant safety concerns. Working on elevated surfaces is a dangerous scenario, which may lead to gait and postural instability and, consequently, a serious fall. Previous studies showed that VR is a promising tool for measuring the impact of height on the postural sway. However, most of these studies used the treadmill as the walking locomotion apparatus in a virtual environment (VE). This paper was focused on natural walking locomotion to reduce the inherent postural perturbations of VR devices. To investigate the impact of virtual height on gait characteristics and keep the level of realism and feeling of presence at their highest, we enhanced the first-person-character model with "virtual legs". Afterward, we investigated its effect on the gait parameters of the participants with and without the presence of height. To that end, twelve healthy adults were asked to walk on a virtual loop path once at the ground level and once at the 17th floor of an unfinished structure. By quantitatively comparing the participants' gait pattern results, we observed a decrease in the stride length and increase in the gait duration of the participants exposed to height. At the ground level, the use of the enhanced model reduced participants' average stride length and height. The results of this study help us understand users' behaviors when they were exposed to elevated surfaces and establish a firm ground for gait stability analysis for the future height-related VR studies. We expect this developed VR platform can generate reliable results of VR application in more construction safety studies.