Visual cueing modulation of cycling speed for training person with stroke in a virtual cycling system

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate manipulation of cycling speed in virtual cycling system to affect person with stroke behaviour in real world. We have developed a virtual reality augmented cycling (VRAC) system to examine vision aspects of person post stroke with less walking ability by modifying virtual environment features which affecting cycling speed including gain, width and difficulty of cycling path. We tested two groups of participants divided into healthy young participants (n=3), and people post stroke (n=2) as all of them cycled using virtual cycling while we modified the features of virtual environment. From the tested result, we only found a slight difference in the behaviour of participants in the same group, but there are significant differences between groups of participants. In conclusion, manipulation of cycling speed in virtual environment had changed cycling behaviour of two groups and assisted to transfer visual information in real world to virtual world.