Immersive Virtual Reality as a Countermeasure for Dysphoria in Space/Expeditionary Environments
William J. Meyer · 2003
Loneliness, depression, and anxiety pose obstacles to long-term manned space missions. Telepresence and virtual reality (VR) systems hold promise to increase options for two established countermeasures: recreation and contact with loved ones. A new immersive VR approach, Closed Eyes Telehaptic Communication (CETC), may be uniquely suited for space flight and expeditionary environments. An existing prototype enables physically distant pairs of individuals to experience each other’s presence, with eyes closed, in a shared virtual space, designed to be easily co-imagined. Respiration and heartbeat information are passed between the users, non-visually, via subtle haptic (touch) and sound cues. CETC is low-cost, compact, lightweight, and stable. It uses standard Internet protocols and functions effectively on dial-up modem bandwidths. During pilot testing, user pairs reported feeling a strong sense of remote partners’ physical presences. The system is adaptable to changing user requirements and remote interactions are expected to retain the sense of real-time presence, even with the long communication delays encountered during spaceflight.