Democratizing a Large Over Ground Virtual Suite (Logvs) Involving Human Interaction for Rehabilitation Sciences and Practice

Virtual environments (VE) used within rehabilitation-based virtual reality (VR) platforms often limit their social environmental context and the ability to move naturally within the VE. This technical note presents an evolving VR platform offering virtual human pedestrian (VP) interaction and highlights specific developments underway and future directions for use in research and practice. The platform called the Large Over Ground Virtual Suite or Log <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">vs</inf> uses affordable, mobile VR technology involving a VE with multimodal navigation options (biped and wheeled locomotion) while manipulating VP characteristics (e.g., emotions, expressions, physical interactions). The overall goal of the evolving platform is to democratically enhance interdisciplinary study, assessment, and training of different aspects of social interaction (social cognition, mobility, multiple sensory-motor interactions) to cater to rehabilitation research and clinical needs more effectively. In addition to detailing the platform and examples of current uses and developments, this work serves to also comment on the need for greater sharing of immersive technology resources across the rehabilitation sciences community.