Exercise and rehabilitation in virtual worlds

Exercise and sports

If you never dared to try an extreme sport, such as skydiving, deep-sea diving, rock climbing or car racing, virtual worlds can offer you that possibility without the potential risks. You can also get swimming lessons or do kayaking, or an epic quest in an imaginary environment, where you hike, ride a horse or a fantasy animal or machine, use martial arts or do swords fencing.

To be able to do such sports where you often move fast, you need a fast internet connection and a powerful computer microprocessor that respond fast to your movements as you would otherwise experience delays in seeing your avatar move on the screen or in the headset. Imagine cycling in a peloton with lots of other cyclists and you suddenly stop without showing the stop signs and surprise everyone behind you. They then crash into you – virtually of course, so you won’t be physically injured - but you would have a lot of angry fellow avatars. The EU project Sharespace (Embodied Social Experiences in Hybrid Shared Spaces) is working on unique experiences in shared hybrid spaces mixing real and artificial intelligence (AI) driven users. One real life test case is a peloton where users need to coordinate with each other in a fast-moving scenario. 

A lot of these classes are commercially driven, and you will have to pay for them, which is why you need to consider how safe the provider is before giving your credit card details. Also, you may need specific equipment, such as an indoor bike adapted for extended reality (XR) applications, with a special screen, headset, and sensors when cycling with friends. It is important to make sure you have the equipment and connection requirements you need before paying for an application or subscription.

Rehabilitation

Another use of virtual worlds is rehabilitation after an accident or to help people overcome phobias, such as fear of heights. Tactility (TACTIle feedback enriched virtual interaction through virtual realITY and beyond)is a EU-funded project working with the fear of spiders (see article in Horizon – The EU research and innovation magazine). Virtual rehabilitation allows people to join an exercise from different locations. That means that patients can do their rehabilitation from home during part of the recuperation period. The EU-funded project VR2Care works with countering isolation and rehabilitation of elderly patients, but the results can be used for several other scenarios too. 

Using extended reality technologies in your home or at the rehab centre may allow your physiotherapist to develop exercises especially for you by checking your posture, monitoring your progress allowing you to evolve in specially designed environments to stimulate your recovery. One of many EU projects working on rehabilitation is SUN, which is developing applications for rehabilitation, ergonomics, postural analysis and exercising. 

EU project Sharespace also has another scenario where the patient can stay at home throughout the first part of rehabilitation using virtual reality. Avatars help the patient to do the exercises correctly. Then, in a second phase, the patient joins the lab using augmented reality (AR) glasses, adding social presence to the process. The different approaches will help health care providers to find suitable and efficient care for chronic pain patients, while making the life of the patient easier and less disturbed.