Head Mounted Display Rehabilitation Collision Avoidance

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Solution Overview

Problem

Users wearing head-mounted displays during rehabilitation cannot see their surroundings, leading to a high risk of injury from collisions with real-space objects.

Innovation Solution

A rehabilitation support apparatus that includes a detector to track the user's head direction and a display controller to generate and display rehabilitation target objects in a virtual space, avoiding collisions by controlling the display to keep objects out of the user's reach in real space.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Productivity

If a head mounted display is used for rehabilitation training, then the user can visually recognize rehabilitation target objects and perform training, but the user cannot see the real surroundings and may collide with objects causing injury

Engineering Contradiction:
Improverehabilitation training effectivenessVSAvoidcollision injury risk
Core Design Contradiction:
ProductivityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The system introduces a camera as an intermediary device to capture real-world surroundings and displays them on the head mounted display screen. This mediator allows the user to see through the display while performing rehabilitation training, eliminating the collision risk without compromising training effectiveness

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The system merges the rehabilitation training interface with the real-world camera feed into a single display on the head mounted display. By combining these two visual streams, the user can simultaneously perceive both the virtual rehabilitation targets and the real surrounding environment, resolving the contradiction between training effectiveness and safety

Inventive Principle:
Principle #5Merging (Combining)

Data Source

PatentEP3831355B1Rehabilitation assistance device
Publication Date: 2024.05.08 MEDIVR INC
  • EP3831355B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3831355B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP3831355B1 patent drawingFigure 3a

AI summary

An apparatus for supporting rehabilitation of a user includes a detector that detects a direction of a head of the user wearing a head mounted display, and a display controller that generates, in a virtual space, a rehabilitation target object to be visually recognized by the user and displays the target object on the head mounted display in accordance with the direction of the head of the user detected by the detector. To avoid risk that the user interferes with an object in a real space, the display controller further controls display of the head mounted display.