Underwater VR Experience System for Scuba Training Using Underwater Wired HMD

Scuba diving (scuba) accidents occur globally because of a lack of basic scuba skills or insufficiently high skill levels. As a result, it is desirable to construct an environment capable of enabling sufficient scuba training while reducing the burden on scuba students. We describe the development of an underwater virtual reality system for scuba training using an underwater wired head mounted display (UWHMD). This system has two advantages. First, a strong sense of reality is obtained by combining the weightlessness obtained by diving with a highly immersive image. Second, the system is very versatile, so a user can experience the system in easily accessible waters such as swimming pools or shallow water. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of our prototype system and the creation of underwater virtual reality content to provide the diving experience. The proposed system consists of the UWHMD with a head tracking sensor, laptop PC, and a waterproof hose to protect the cables. The UWHMD and laptop PC are connected by cables for power, communication, and video transmission. The created virtual reality content makes it possible to freely swim in a virtual undersea world using head tracking. The results of system tests verify that our prototype provides stereoscopic images and can be used at a depth of about 4 m.