Virtual exercise environment for promoting active lifestyle for people with lower body disabilities

This paper presents the development and evaluation of the use of virtual reality technology, together with appropriately adapted exercise through an augmented reality interface, to create Virtual Exercise Environments (VEEs). These environments allow persons with lower body disabilities to exercise and train just like what people do in real world. This paper presents our current research on VEE to facilitate participation and adherence using a VEE as a prototype, using common-off-the-shelf hardware components. The major aim of this paper is to make exercise more enjoyable and less repetitious for people with lower body disabilities. Responses of 26 participants is presented and analyzed. Based on the responses, people with lower body disabilities showed higher satisfaction with every aspect of the environment than people without disabilities, from which we can conclude that our VEE is more suitable for people with lower body disabilities.