An immersive system for light vehicles in entertainment apps using virtual reality

Nowadays, virtual reality has many innovative applications in the engineering field. The present w ork focuses on developing an integrated virtual reality system for entertainment using light vehicles for indoor cycling to generate an immersive experience. The methodology is based on the next stages: 1) the user operation for direct interaction with the system; 2) the data acquisition using sensors to process them through the ESP32 development board; 3) the simulation and communication using MQTT protocol between software and hardware, generating variations in the physical and virtual environment; 4) the motor control to generate the resistance to movement through simulator roller according to the changes in the virtual environment. Finally, 5) the mobile app to view and save speed, slope, and time variables collected during an active session. According to the results, the localhost MQTT broker is the most stable server for connecting different devices in 10 milliseconds. The maximum latency between ESP32 and Unity is 6.01 milliseconds. The real speed of movement correlates 0.999 with the speed measured by the sensor and generated in a virtual environment. According to the survey, the level of satisfaction with using the immersive system is around 91%, on the Likert scale. Compared with a commercial system, it is a low-cost alternative for this type of application because the cost has been reduced to about 53%. Future work is focused on developing an immersive system for remote tourism and rehabilitation for disabled people applications.