Virtual reality has undoubtedly been one of the hottest tech innovations of recent times. But that being said, the concept of it has existed for a long time now. Thanks to movies like tron and the matrix, people have been introduced to and mesmerised by the possibilities of virtual reality. So, having witnessed such a build up, people who have actually waited for such devices to materialize in real life have finally gotten their wish. We are truly living in exciting times now, as some virtual reality devices have even matured to the point of mainstream usage. And most recently, researchers from the University of Warwick combined the powers of virtual reality and 3d motion capture to help physiotherapy patients perform their exercises. So let us now take a look at this amazing feat a little more in detail.
At the moment, the most followed route for physiotherapy treatments is of course the traditional, manual approach. An individual would have to physically show up at their concerned physiotherapists clinic and learn the exercises as per instruction. And unless you can afford a personal physiotherapist who would come to your house for classes, or are willing to make the commute to show up at the physiotherapist’s clinic, the only thing you can do is to perform your exercises at home based on memory or noted down instructions.
Yes, the existence of youtube and other video services can help you learn certain exercises, but third party instructions will of course not be catered to your specific needs or adhere to the directions given by your physiotherapist. So for this reason, the researchers from Warwick University used modern day virtual reality technology along with 3d motion capture to create an avatar that can exactly mimic the movements of any individual wearing the related 3d motion capture gear.
Essentially, this gear would be worn by a trained physiotherapist whose movements would be mapped onto a virtual avatar. And once the patient wears the associated virtual reality gear, this avatar would appear inside the virtually created world and train the patient just as a human physiotherapist would.
The researchers even took further steps by performing experiments to check whether this technology would prove to be helpful to the patients. They tried slightly modifying the speed of the avatar’s movement to test whether the patients would follow suit. And unsurprisingly, they found that the added visual information and audio information such as the sound of footsteps significantly helped the patients perform their exercises accurately.
It is clear that virtual reality has many applications that can benefit mankind. And even in this particular use case, the effectiveness of this technology still stands. From observations, it is safe to say that physiotherapy patients definitely benefit from the technology, both in terms of convenience and accuracy. And with further refinements to this technology, there is no saying as to how far this technology can help us evolve as a race. So in conclusion, Virtual reality is undoubtedly the future of technology, medical or otherwise.