“Leg-Jack: Generation of the Sensation of Walking by Electrical and Kinesthetic Stimuli to the Lower Limbs”
Conference:
Experience Type(s):
Title:
- Leg-Jack: Generation of the Sensation of Walking by Electrical and Kinesthetic Stimuli to the Lower Limbs
Organizer(s)/Presenter(s):
Description:
Leg-Jack is a neurosensory and kinesthetic stimulation system that combines an electrical stimulus applied to tendons, a kinesthetic stimulus to the lower limb, and an audio-visual stimulus to impart a walking sensation to a seated user. The combination of these stimuli significantly increased the subjective ratings of the walking sensation.
We developed a neurosensory and kinesthetic stimulation system that generated a walking sensation for a seated user. An electrical stimulus was applied to Achilles’ and tibialis anterior tendons with a kinesthetic stimulus generated by a lower limb device driven synchronously with an egocentric visual scene during virtual walking. The system works as a part of experience replication scheme that aims to receive other’s physical activity. As a common bodily activity of humans, walking motion was focused. The evaluation experiment has shown that walking sensation was increased by each stimulation at a 1% significance level. In this demonstration, the user on a chair can feel as if he/she is walking in a haunted house. The user can move the upper body freely to look around with a virtual flashlight, however the lower body is possessed by the other. The user walks into the house despite the intention. The work gives the user a realistic experience which was not sufficiently generated with only a movie and sounds.
References:
[1]
Kato, G., Kuroda, Y., Kiyokawa, K., Takemura, H. 2018. Force rendering and its evaluation of a friction-based walking sensation display for a seated user. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 24(4), 1506–1514.
[2]
Lopes, P., You, S., Cheng, L.-P., Marwecki, S., & Baudisch, P. (2017). Providing Haptics to Walls & Heavy Objects in Virtual Reality by Means of Electrical Muscle Stimulation. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’17 (pp. 1471–1482). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press.
