A Study on Mental Stress Test using Cybersickness caused by Virtual Reality Contents

Cybersickness caused by virtual reality (VR) experiences has long been considered as one of the side effects. This paper attempts to utilize the cybersickness to induce responses of autonomous nervous system (ANS) and consequently to stimulate changes in heart rate variability (HRV). VR contents are developed with a free and open-source 3D Universe system (Gaia Sky) by setting velocity, direction and trajectory properties of a camera. Experiments using these VR contents were conducted to evaluate the proposed method, and ten subjects took part in the experiments. Short-time HRV analysis has been applied and the experimental results show that changes of HRV features can be recognized between sessions of VR contents and resting.