Current Trend of VR Application for Assistive Technology

Abstract

 Recent matured virtual reality (VR) technologies produces highly immersive environment with reasonable priced equipments. Therefore, recent matured VR technologies boost up many researches applying VR for assisting people with disabilities. This paper reviews current trend of VR-based assistive technology (VR-AT) researches. VR-AT research includes simulations of assistive equipments such as wheelchairs, training environments of social lives, computer aided education (CAE) systems for the learning disableds, communication aid for the Deafs and the Blinds, and so on. Successful researches share same strategy, that is, to maximize “reality” which only VR holds, to avoid expensive VR equipments, and to develop under close communication with users. Future trend is to include mobile computing techniques to make VR-AT researches to mediate human-human communications.