Shark punch: A virtual reality game for aquatic rehabilitation

The long term objective of this research is to enable persons with disabilities to play VR games during aquatic rehabilitation [2] sessions. Unfortunately, there have been only a few research projects that have explored VR underwater use [3][1][4], and none of these have addressed rehabilitation. This research focuses on understanding and mitigating the associated usability, accessibility, and system design issues for underwater VR rehabilitation games. Specifically, we present a novel underwater VR game — Shark Punch — in which the user must fend off a virtual Great White shark with real punches in a real underwater environment. This video presents our underwater VR system and our iterative design process through field tests with a disabled user. We conclude with proposed usability, accessibility, and system design guidelines for future underwater VR rehabilitation games.