Virtual Reality at Clarkson
By Careers and the Disabled, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 16-17Publication Date: Spring 2003
Article describes a virtual reality wheelchair created as an interdisciplinary project at Clarkson University, which gives students the opportunity to utilize the engineering and computer skills they developed in the classroom, and to give people with disabilities in northern New York a better chance to experience independent mobility. The virtual reality wheelchair is designed to provide users with the opportunity to operate a powered wheelchair by entering an artificial three-dimensional world, which is generated by a computer. The user wears a head tracker display, and sits in a wheelchair that is mounted on a moving platform. A joystick is utilized to navigate his or her way through a computer-generated scene, which simulates the experience of traveling through a school. The goal of the program is to create progressively more challenging virtual environments to simulate more difficult environments. The program can provide a score that demonstrates how successful the user was in using the application.
Published by: Equal Opportunity Publications, Inc. (Website:http://www.eop.com)
