Design and Testing of Virtual Reality Cycling Exergame Using Handheld Controller

Nowadays, people are busy with gadgets, social media and playing video games that tends their bodies to physically inactive. However, Virtual Reality (VR) exergaming in literature has proven to be one of the best solutions to encourage these sedentary people to live in a healthier lifestyle. Exergaming refers to a combination of video games with a physical exercise that rely on the technology that can track body movement. Hence, this project aims to develop a cycling exergame that integrate with HTC Vive hand controller in VR. There are four phases have been carried out namely (i) problem investigation, (ii) designing the game structure, (iii) implementation of VR cycling exergame, and (iv) testing and evaluation. The usability testing results shows the users feedback on the development of VR Exergame for cycling in terms of the user interface design, player interaction, difficulty of the game and user satisfaction in understanding the game. The user acceptance testing results shows that this game works accordingly, however there are some suggestion and expectation from user that can be measured for improvement and enhancement in future works. Based on the result, this project is successfully produced a cycling exergame in VR and significantly improve the user experience in VR

Affective state recognition in Virtual Reality from electromyography and photoplethysmography using head-mounted wearable sensors.

The three core components of Affective Computing (AC) are emotion expression recognition, emotion processing, and emotional feedback. Affective states are typically characterized in a two-dimensional space consisting of arousal, i.e., the intensity of the emotion felt; and valence, i.e., the degree to which the current emotion is pleasant or unpleasant. These fundamental properties of emotion can not only be measured using subjective ratings from users, but also with the help of physiological and behavioural measures, which potentially provide an objective evaluation across users. Multiple combinations of measures are utilised in AC for a range of applications, including education, healthcare, marketing, and entertainment. As the uses of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are growing, there is a rapidly increasing need for robust affect recognition in VR settings. However, the integration of affect detection methodologies with VR remains an unmet challenge due to constraints posed by the current VR technologies, such as Head Mounted Displays. This EngD project is designed to overcome some of the challenges by effectively integrating valence and arousal recognition methods in VR technologies and by testing their reliability in seated and room-scale full immersive VR conditions. The aim of this EngD research project is to identify how affective states are elicited in VR and how they can be efficiently measured, without constraining the movement and decreasing the sense of presence in the virtual world. Through a three-years long collaboration with Emteq labs Ltd, a wearable technology company, we assisted in the development of a novel multimodal affect detection system, specifically tailored towards the requirements of VR. This thesis will describe the architecture of the system, the research studies that enabled this development, and the future challenges. The studies conducted, validated the reliability of our proposed system, including the VR stimuli design, data measures and processing pipeline. This work could inform future studies in the field of AC in VR and assist in the development of novel applications and healthcare interventions