A study of detecting and combating cybersickness with fuzzy control for the elderly within 3D virtual stores

Elderly individuals can access online 3D virtual stores from their homes to make purchases. However, most virtual environments (VEs) often elicit physical responses to certain types of movements in the VEs. Some users exhibit symptoms that parallel those of classical motion sickness, called cybersickness, both during and after the VE experience. This study investigated the factors that contribute to cybersickness among the elderly when immersed in a 3D virtual store. The results of the first experiment show that the simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) scores increased significantly by the reasons of navigational rotating speed and duration of exposure. Based on these results, a warning system with fuzzy control for combating cybersickness was developed. The results of the second and third experiments show that the proposed system can efficiently determine the level of cybersickness based on the fuzzy sets analysis of operating signals from scene rotating speed and exposure duration, and subsequently combat cybersickness. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.