Our journal article “The Implementation & Validation of a Virtual Environment for Training Powered Wheelchair Manoeuvres” has been accepted in IEEE Transactions of Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG).

We present the utility of a cost-effective virtual environment for powered wheelchair training, built from commercial off-the-shelf components. Our indings support our hypothesis that a serious game (virtual environment) utilising the Oculus Rift HMD can provide a safe environment in which a new user of a powered wheelchair can quickly learn driving skills. Our results indicate that: a) the learning done in the HMD-based VR environment was transferred to the physical world; and b) there is a benefit in using a VR-HMD simulator for training wheelchair users, in terms of navigation performance improvement. Coupling that with the safety that users felt and overall confidence the HMD version provided, there are clear benefits in using HMD-based VR for training wheelchair users.

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