The initial fitting of an upper limb prosthesis can be a frustrating
experience for amputees, impairing the learning of prosthesis control.
Therefore, the prosthesis manufacturer Otto Bock in collaboration with
Vienna University of Technology developed a Virtual Reality environment
in which tasks can be trained in order to continuously motivate the
amputees to practice their control skills without taking risks.
iotracker optical motion capture system, developed by Vienna UT, is used to track the amputee's arm and head movement to allow for 3D input and correct visualization of the virtual environment in a head mounted display. Along with the tracking data, electromyography is used to generate input for grasping control of the virtual prosthesis, creating a realistic simulation. Tracking data of iotracker and electromyography is fed into ARTiFICE, an Augmented Reality Framework for Distributed Collaboration. ARTiFICe maps the tracking data to the virtual objects, using Unity3D game engine for networking, real time rendering and object’s physical behaviour.
Project Team:
Hannes Kaufmann, Michael Bressler, Andrei Ninu, Christian Schönauer, Annette Mossel
Project Time: 2011 - today
Links: Project Homepage
Related Talks & Publications:
- 08 / 2012 "Virtual Reality Training for Upper Limb Prosthesis Patients" , Unite'12 (Serious Gaming Session), Amsterdam, Netherlands
