Virtual Reality Test Setup for Visual Impairment Studies

Visual impairment severely constraints the ability to independently conduct many everyday tasks that we usually do not consider challenging. Although some types of visual impairment can be treated efficiently there is still a considerable number of visually impaired persons, especially among aging population, which depend on help of others or assistive technology to sustain their life quality. Visually impaired person cannot perceive the full extent of surrounding information due to the lack of visual details. However great progress can be achieved if surrounding information can be somehow visually transformed to the subset of visual information that visually impaired person can perceive. To certain extent every impairment has individual characteristics, as different individuals may better respond to different subsets of visual information. Thus any assistive solution aiming to visually transform surrounding information to accommodate broad range of impairment conditions must be personalized in order to be effective. Virtual reality enables individuals to experience imaginary surroundings by tricking their visual senses and such virtual surroundings can be personalized to any extent desired. We use virtual reality, image processing, and RFID to create a test setup able to simulate visual impairment and visually transformed surroundings suitable for visual Impairment studies. The test setup enables gathering information and conducting studies on both healthy and visually impaired individuals in a controlled environment enabling reliable assistive technology development and testing.