Balance studies

I was tasked with making a VR simulation that lifts people up to a hight and have them walk from one side of a plank to another. During this process data is collected for hands, feet, head, and hip placements at any given point in time. The study was to see if people get worried when at hight like they do in real life. The paper was published, and yes, people are less balanced when at virtual heights just like they are in real heights.

On the technical side of things, I built a plank generator and alignment tools. This let the researchers place a real world plank anywhere they wanted and have the software adapt to the new location. This was very important to make the subjects feel as if the simulation was real. They could use the foot tracking and hand their toes off the plank, they would feel the real plank under their feet and see the virtual representation reflecting that. All of the data was collected and saved and live streamed up to a data collection server. This allowed the researchers to quickly get access to the data they have collected and begin running their analysis’s on the data