Providing Access to VR Through a Wheelchair

Individuals may use their wheelchair to play VR games, explore three-dimensional, visual worlds and take part in virtual social events, even if they do not master the hand- or head- inputs that are common for VR. We present the development of a low-cost, do-it-yourself, wheelchair locomotion-device, which allows navigation in VR. More than 50 people, including 9 wheelchair users, participated in the evaluations of three prototypes and a number of games developed for them. Initially, cybersickness turned out to be a problem, but when we changed to an electric wheelchair instead of a manual and fine-tuned the controls this discomfort was remarkably reduced. We suggest using this device for gaming, training, interaction design, accessibility studies and the operation of robots.