Development of virtual reality environment for walking training of patients with stroke

Abstract

We propose a novel walking rehabilitation system that simulates the home environment for hospitalized stroke patients using virtual reality (VR) technology. In this preliminary study, we investigated whether the VR environment could simulate similar effect in walking behavior on the varied width of the passageway as in a real space. Healthy young adults performed Timed up and go (TUG) test with 1, 2, and 3 m width of the passageway in real and VR space. Although walking in VR space took more time and number of steps to perform TUG than the real space, the width of the walking trajectory showed comparable tendency related to the width of the passageway both in VR and real spaces. These results suggest that VR could sufficiently simulate the visual and psychological effects of the real environment.