Exploration of Visuo-haptic Interactions to Support Learning Leopold's Maneuvers Process in Virtual Reality
Conference Paper
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
Immersive technologies have been utilized in nursing education and other disciplines as effective learning and teaching tools. Many virtual reality (VR) simulations provide users immersive experiences through audiovisual stimuli. However, these systems do not enable haptic and tangible interactions, preventing them from utilizing higher multisensory stimuli for learning. There is a need in nursing education for more realistic VR experiences that allow direct hand manipulation in the acquisition of assessment skills, especially Leopolds Maneuvers which require palpating the patients abdomen. To meet this need, a haptic-enabled virtual reality simulation called Leopolds Maneuvers VR was developed. This application utilized a set of commercial haptic gloves called SenseGlove to allow users to touch and feel the virtual patients abdomen and fetus in the virtual exam room. To investigate the quality of haptic interactions from Leopolds Maneuvers VR, two sets of user studies were conducted. Study 1 was an explorative haptic experience study to investigate the effectiveness and usability of the haptic interactions. Study1 included three tasks to evaluate four different haptic device settings and a subjective post-study questionnaire to measure sense of presence for each device. Four different haptic device settings consisted of VIVE controller, SenseGlove, Custom-made Vibration glove, and the combination of Vibration glove and SenseGlove. The results show that SenseGlove showed the highest performance in task 1 and Vibration glove showed highest performance in task 2 and 3. According to the quantitative analysis, the combination of the SenseGlove and the Vibration glove provided the highest presence. Study 2 was conducted with three of the haptic devices which showed high performance and presence. Study 2 investigated haptic interactions in the Leopolds Maneuvers process using Leopolds Maneuvers VR application. Most participants showed improvements in Leopold's Maneuvers knowledge after using the application and expressed positive feedback about using haptic devices in the application. This implies that the application may prove to be an effective educational tool in nursing education. In the future, we would like to improve the application based on the user feedback and conduct user studies with more students.
