Development of VR Tactile Educational Tool for Visually Impaired Children: Adaptation of Optical Motion Capture as a Tracker

• Published in: Sensors and materials 2020-11, Vol.32 (11), p.3617
• Main Authors: Asakawa, Naoki, Wada, Hiroki, Shimomura, Yuko, Takasugi, Keigo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Braille; Education; Motion capture; Three dimensional printing; Virtual reality; Visual impairment
• ISSN: 0914-4935
• DOI: 10.18494/SAM.2020.2939

This paper deals with basic research on a tactile virtual reality (VR) system for visually impaired children using optical motion capture and a haptic device. Generally, tactile educational tools for blind children or teaching materials have been produced one by one according to their size and shape. As a result, they take a lot of time to produce and are expensive. In recent years, since 3D printers have been adopted to make tactile educational tools, these problems are being solved. However, it is difficult to use tactile educational tools to show objects moving or growing. We are attempting to develop tactile educational tools for presenting the shapes of objects to visually impaired children using VR. In this paper, as the first step, the development of a trial system allowing an object placed in virtual space to be touched by combining optical motion capture and a haptic device is explained. From the experimental results, the system was found to be effective for expressing a simple-shaped object in virtual space to a user without visual information.