The Haptic Moving Room

Abstract

In the moving room paradigm, visually perceived movements of the walls of a room affect the postural sway of individuals in the room. In this experiment, we used a virtual reality (VR) headset to provide visual information about the room, and a tactile device to provide haptic information about the front wall of the room. The tactile device consisted of 48 vibrotactile motors that were pressed against the abdomen and that provided continuous haptic stimulation. In experimental trials, the virtual room oscillated slowly (0.1 Hz) or quickly (0.75 Hz). Participants who stood on a force platform observed the room visually, haptically, or visually and haptically. The registered postural sway reflected the oscillations of the room in all conditions, including the purely haptic ones. The fact that participants coupled their body sway to the room in the visual conditions replicates previous findings that the moving room paradigm can be applied in VR. Although the coupling was less pronounced in the haptic conditions, the existence of this coupling demonstrates that a completely new type of flow information is spontaneously integrated in the elementary and highly practiced perceptual-motor activity of balance control. Applications in the fields of sensory substitution and rehabilitation are discussed.