Table of content

About the project

Arm rehabilitation application

Potential Users

Use case

Technologies

Implemented Interaction techniques

About the project

The theme of this project answers the question : In order to improve the sensation of touch in an application of rehabilitation application, can we use vibration-based feedbacks ?

Arm rehabilitation application

This is an interactive 3D application in which a patient currently undergoing rehabilitation of one of his arms is asked to perform a task of opening a door with the help of his arm. This task consists in successively operating different models of virtual door handles. Each door handle has a different shape and size than the others. The grasping of the handle with the virtual hand is indicated by vibrations at the handle. The vibrations increase according to the "hardness" of the handle. The size of the handle affects the angle of rotation of the user's wrist.

Potential Users

Our application will be dedicated to patients who are undergoing rehabilitation of one of their arms. It will also be recommended for the rehabilitation of patients diagnosed with cerebral paralysis or for post-avc rehabilitation.

Use case

We propose an example of use to test the proper functioning of the developed application. Thus, we will have a user who represents the patient. Then, the user must wear his VR headset to ensure immersion in the virtual world and to discover the 3D environment before him. He must also take in hand the controllers to perform tasks.

The application suggests tasks to perform with his arm during rehabilitation to train. He will then see in front of him some doors to open in a gym. So, he must follow the following steps:

• Use the arm in question.
• Use the joysticks to touch the door handles.
• Open the door using the virtual handle.
• Vibrations are activated via the joysticks indicating the opening of a door.
• Repeat this process as many times as the number of doors.

Technologies

This project was built with :

• Unity3D
• C#
• VsCode

Implemented Interaction techniques

There's four 3D interactions possible to implement in a virtual environnement :

Navigation

We implemented the simplest navigation technique in a Virtual environnement which is navigating by traveling (when the point of vue changes the person is moving):

Selection

We implemented the Ray-Casting selection technique :

Manipulation

The manipulation technique implemented is also Ray-Casting (because we cannot manipulate an object without selecting it) and Simple VH (Virtual Hand) combined :

NOTE

This was an experimental school project to study the advantages virtual reality applications can bring to the medical field and more specifically in the therapy field.

Application control

We have a scoring system in the screens that appear in front of the patient :