Stepping-in-Place Training in Virtual Environment

The paper proposes stepping in place (SIP) as a modality of lower-extremities training in virtual reality. A kinematic model of a human body and a corresponding virtual figure were developed, in order to visualize the movements of the subject in a real-time virtual environment on a large display, which represented a virtual mirror. An optical system with active markers was used to assess the stepping movements of a training subject. A preliminary investigation was conducted with a group of healthy male subjects, who performed the SIP test by tracking the movements of the reference virtual figure, which represented a virtual instructor. Both figures, the training subject and virtual instructor, were superimposed and shown from the desired angle of view. The subjects performed two stepping tasks featuring different cadences. The results obtained included basic kinematic and temporal parameters of SIP, thereby providing quantitative measures of subject´s immersion in the virtual training environment.