A research tool for biomechanics toward sensory-motor manipulation, Unity 3D

Abstract

As visual stimuli for exercise and cognitive rehabilitation of biomechanics, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices have getting popularity. In the process of developing the relevant content for VR and AR, there has been a problem that only a specific platform must be supported or multiple programs must be used. Recently, the Unity 3D platform has been developed for the convenience of game development for VR or AR environments that potentially solve these problems. Unity 3D’s game engine and animation can easily implement a moving avatar as visual stimuli, and the speed of the avatars can be checked in real-time. Therefore, we developed a moving avatar as the visual stimuli using Unity 3D and conducted pilot experiments with four healthy subjects by performing the knee extension and ankle dorsiflexion tasks with and without visual stimuli. The number of movements was counted to check the feasibility of the effectiveness using visual stimuli using Unity 3D. The results showed that the number of movements was higher when the visual stimuli were presented compared to that without the visual stimuli in both ankle dorsiflexion and knee extension. Our findings and approach can be a basis for further developing rehabilitation training protocols using various visual stimuli with Unity 3D. ？ 2021 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.