Gait Parameters in Stressful Virtual Environments

We share the results of a preliminary experiment where participants performed a simple task in a control immersive virtual environment (IVE) followed by a stressful IVE. Participants’ gaits were recorded with a motion capture system. We computed speed, stride length, and stride width for each participant and found that participants take significantly shorter strides in the stressful environment, but stride width and walking speed do not show a significant difference. In a future experiment we will continue to study how gait parameters relate to a user’s experience of a virtual environment. We hope to find parameters that can be used as metrics for comparing a user’s level of presence in different virtual environments.