The effect of cybersickness of an immersive wheelchair simulator.

Abstract

A key challenge that Immersive applications have to overcome is cybersickness. Cybersickness is particularly prevalent in dynamic applications such as vehicles simulators. The work presented here aims to understand the cause of cybersickness symptoms in an assistive technology (AT) application, the virtual wheelchair training simulator. This evaluation is performed in terms of errors made during experience and post-experience Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). The performance metrics analyzed are time to complete the proposal task and number of collisions (errors/mistakes). The post-experience questionnaires (subjective measurements) collected the user’s experience in terms of simulator sickness by applying the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) and immersion questions. The experiments were conducted with 10 participants. In terms of results, analysis of human factors reveals that the average cybersickness score is slightly higher for women compared to men. However, these differences were not statistically significant. There was an inverse correlation between cybersickness symptoms and task performance as well as between cybersickness symptoms and immersion.