Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) September 16, 2014
VT MÄK (MÄK), a company of Vision Technologies Systems, Inc. (VT Systems), today announced that Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has chosen DI-Guy, VT MÄK’s line of human simulation software, to help develop a virtual environment to prevent athletic injury, quantify the progress of athletes as they return to sport following injury, and promote physical activity in youth. The TEAM VR Laboratory (Training Enhancement and Analysis of Movement Virtual Reality) in the Division of Sports Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s is using DI-Guy to build scenarios with strong stories to draw in the patients and immerse them in the overall experience.
MÄK’s DI-Guy software provides the artificial intelligence (AI) engine to drive three key immersion components for patients when inside the virtual environment.
1. Strategic immersion - a combination of immediate, physical responses and more cerebral, cognitive decisions by the user that underlie the overt strategies adopted to complete scenario tasks.
2. Social immersion - the athlete’s interaction with other non-player characters (both computer and human driven) that are present in the same virtual world.
3. Narrative immersion - the athlete’s investment in the scenario, or how much he or she cares about the additional non-player characters and overall task goals.
TEAM VR’s virtual environments aim to give physicians, physical therapists, athletic trainers, practitioners, and strength and conditioning specialists the tools to accurately measure the biomechanics of a child patient (joint movements, strength, or flexibility, for example) by actively engaging him/her in in realistic, immersive sport scenarios performed in a virtual environment that mimics competition on the field/court of play.
The TEAM VR environment is different than Cave virtual environments in that the participants are not tethered to the equipment and are able to move naturally over ground without the use of a treadmill. It is fully integrated into the world renowned Human Performance Laboratory and utilizes 35 motion capture cameras to detect the location of the athletes and transmit the virtual environment to the head mounted display worn by the athletes via a customized wireless video system that updates the display in close to real time. The virtual environment will use DI-Guys to represent opponents, teammates, and coaches/instructors. The goal is to get the athletes actively playing the sport so that clinicians can measure modifiable injury-risk biomechanics to enhance movement adaptations and provide feedback in a safe, controlled space.
“DI-Guy supplements our own in-house customized environments and scenarios. The technology provides full scenario customization with drag-and-drop commands that also integrate into Unity 3D.”
~Adam KIEFER, PhD
Director of TEAM VR Laboratory