Development and Evaluation of a Haptic Virtual Walker for Wheelchair Users in Immersive VR Environments

This paper presents the development of a virtual walker for wheelchair users designed for use in highly immersive environments, such as Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVEs). The system allows users to navigate virtual environments using their natural wheelchair movements, providing haptic feedback based on the terrain they traverse. Both the control software and hardware have been developed from scratch and integrated into various CAVEs, including one with a six-degree-of-freedom (DOF) motion platform. To test the system, a comparative study was conducted with 21 users, measuring the time taken to complete the same course using different interaction methods and various feedback configurations with the virtual environment. The results show that the shortest times were achieved when users navigated using their natural interaction with their wheelchairs.