Session: CIE-18-01 - VES: Technologies for VR, AR, and MR

Paper Number: 90553

90553 - Virtual Reality for Delivering Swimming Practice Through Water-Free Immersive Training System 

Learning to swim is essential at any age as a great way to exercise and part of safety measures. Not everyone feels comfortable to start practicing from being in the water due to specific psychological or physical difficulties. Similarly, the in-water practice lacks real-time feedback for postures or stroke corrections. However, Virtual Reality (VR) technology presents a great potential to enable a water-free approach as preparation for, or supplementary to, in-water practice. Such technology is still under-explored. This paper proposes a Water-Free Immersive Training System (WIST) which verifies the feasibility of a Water-free Immersive Training System using system construction and experience tests. WITS features whole-body physical feedback (e.g.through distributed resistance materials or controllable air cushions) and body movement tracking to provide visual and embodied immersion and real-time training feedback. A Presence Questionnaire (PQ) is adopted to analyze users’ immersive experience. The paper ends with a brief discussion of user experiences of the devices, which broader implications and directions for future development. This paper is intended to propose a novel design application and expand the possibility of other innovative forms of immersive sports. At the same time, it provides a set of design-oriented insights into creating embodied immersive experiences in VR systems.

Presenting Author: Shuo Li 上海交通大学

Presenting Author Biography: Shuo Li is a Second-year Ph.D in the Design School at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her main research directions are human-computer interaction, healthcare and virtual reality.

Authors:

Shuo Li 上海交通大学
Hongtao Zheng Shanghai JiaoTong University
Wenyu Yuan Shanghai JiaoTong University
Ting Han Shanghai Jiaotong Unversity