Unconstrained Walking Plane to Virtual Environment for Spatial Learning by Visually Impaired

Treadmill-style locomotion interfaces for locomotion in virtual environment typically have two problems that impact their usability: bulky or complex drive mechanism and stability problem. The bulky or complex drive mechanism requirement restricts the practical use of this locomotion interface and stability problem results in the induction of fear psychosis to the user. This paper describes a novel simple treadmill-style locomotion interface that uses manual treadmill with handles to provide needbased support, thus allowing walking with assured stability. Its simplicity of design coupled with supervised multi-modal training facility makes it an effective device for spatial learning and thereby enhancing the mobility skills of visually impaired people. It facilitates visually impaired person in developing cognitive maps of new and unfamiliar places through virtual environment exploration, so that they can navigate through such places with ease and confidence in real. In this paper, we describe the structure and control mechanism of the device along with system architecture and experimental results on general usability of the system.