Characteristics of virtual walking sensation created by a 3-dof motion seat

This paper describes rendering characteristics of a virtual walk by a motion seat. The motion seat creates a small body motion in three dof (lift, roll, and pitch directions) to make the user feel as if the user him-/herself is walking despite sitting own body. We consider the actual self body is a medium to render the virtual body to share experiences of others by using the motion seat as part of the multisensory display. After setting the motion to optimally present a walking sensation, basic characteristics of perception levels of the virtual walk by the seat motion were measured and compared with those for a real walk. The result indicated that the perception levels of the virtual walk were around those of a real walk.