Abstract
This paper conducts an extensive survey on existing Virtual Reality (VR)-based rehabilitation approaches in the context of different types of impairments: mobility, cognitive, and visual. Some VR-based assistive technologies involve repetitions of body movements, some require persistent mental exercise, while some work as sensory substitution systems. A multi-modal VR-based environment can incorporate a number of senses, (i.e., visual, auditory, or haptic) into the system and can be an immense source of motivation and engagement in comparison with traditional rehabilitation therapy. This survey categorizes virtual environments on the basis of different available modalities. Each category is again subcategorized by the types of impairments while introducing available devices and interfaces. Before concluding the survey, the paper also briefly focuses on some issues with existing VR-based approaches that need to be optimized to exploit the utmost benefit of virtual environment-based rehabilitation systems .
Highlights
A virtual environment (VE) gives the illusion of being there to the user by evoking the sense of presence (Meehan et al 2002)
Children suffering from neurological disorders like cerebral palsy, autism, elderly people or people undergoing post TBIphase or similar events suffer from functional deficiencies such as little or no response to surrounding events, longer reaction time, mental distraction, forgetfulness, depression, or lack of problem-solving ability
In motor-rehabilitation training, force feedbackbased Virtual Reality (VR) therapy was found to be more effective and produced faster results in comparison with visual feedback-only VR systems (Jack et al 2001). Grounded exoskeletons with their large workspace, ability to work in different modes and orthotic shells ensure gradual motor recovery of an entire limb in a safe and engaging environment
Summary
A virtual environment (VE) gives the illusion of being there to the user by evoking the sense of presence (Meehan et al 2002). Training duration and intensity can be manipulated as per the users requirements to meet a certain goal This can provide the user with immediate visual feedback about their gait and deviations from correct posture by incorporating a self-avatar of the patient and the trainer avatar at the same time (Chua et al 2003). This can offer better judgment of progress and lesser use of manpower.
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