Interaction with virtual spiders for eliciting disgust in the treatment of phobias

Virtual reality has already been successfully used as a therapeutic tool for the treatment of various phobias. Due to advances in the 3D graphics and in the computing power, the real-time visual rendering of a virtual world poses no significant problems nowadays. However, the haptic interaction with such environments remains a challenge. This paper explores the haptic interaction with a dedicated virtual environment in spider phobia treatment to elicit disgust, as changes in fear and in disgust were shown to be highly associated with the observed decline in arachnophobic symptoms. A dedicated virtual environment is programmed within which a Novint Falcon haptic device is used for the interaction with a virtual spider. Different software options for interfacing with the haptic device and for the modeling of 3D objects are compared and discussed. Three testing scenarios are implemented that allow a subject to be gradually exposed to his/her spider phobia.