Crawling into human digestive organs by visual, tactile and auditory sensations

Abstract

We have developed a full-body virtual-presence system that users crawl to travel in human inner body, and learn structures of digestive organs by visual, tactile and auditory sensations. Digestive organs (esophagus, stomach, bile, small intestine, large intestine, rectum) were created in details with 3-D images that users could look around using a head-mounted display, and appropriate feelings of touches were presented to users’ abdomen and thighs by vibrotactile devices. Users’ crawling was detected by pressure sensors so that they could travel in the digestive organs while hearing realistic 3-D sounds. Participants felt as if their own body became a digested food and was moving in other’s inner body. This system may serve an interactive education contents of human inner body.