Virtual Wheelchair

A virtual wheelchair project designed by Brian Duggan, a graduate mathematics
student at UCSD and programmer at SDSC, and Jason Ditmars, a kinetic sculptor
with a background in electronic and interactive installations, was featured
as part of the CitySpace virtual reality project at SIGGRAPH 95.  

Ditmars and Duggan have designed a device that uses optical encoders to read
the movement of standard wheelchair wheels and transfer the sensation of
motion into a virtual landscape. The landscape was created using Alias and
real-time interaction with the environment was made possible by Performer.
All work was performed on Silicon Graphics machines.  

At SIGGRAPH, Duggan and Ditmars will provide a wheelchair accessible
interface to the Performer-driven virtual space of CitySpace. Attendees were
able to sit in a wheelchair provided by Duggan and Ditmars or use their own
to experience wheelchair mobility in a virtual environment that is a a model
for a city. Duggan and Ditmars have developed their own virtual environment
that draws on a metaphorical relationship between the journey taken by
information on the Internet and the journey taken by those in wheelchairs on
the city pathways.  

Submitted by Zeke Rabkin 

http://www.sdsc.edu/SDSCwire/v1.2/2006.wheelchair.html
http://www.sdsc.edu/IOTW/week34/iotw.html