Locomotion in Virtual Reality for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Virtual reality (VR) has been used as an effective tool for training individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recently there have been an increase in the number of applications developed for this purpose. One of the most important aspects of these applications is locomotion, which is an essential form of human computer interaction. Locomotion in VR has a direct effect on many aspects of user experience such as enjoyment, frustration, tiredness, motion sickness and presence. There have been many locomotion techniques proposed for VR. Most of them were designed and evaluated for neurotypical users. On the other hand, for individuals with ASD there isn't any study to our knowledge that focuses on locomotion techniques and their evaluation. In this study, eight locomotion techniques were implemented in an immersive virtual reality test environment. These eight VR locomotion techniques may be categorized as follows: three commonly used locomotion techniques (redirected walking, walk-in-place and joystick controller), two unexplored locomotion techniques (stepper machine and point & teleport) and three locomotion techniques that were selected and designed for individuals with ASD based on their common characteristics (flying, flapping and trackball controller). A user study was performed with 12 high functioning individuals with ASD. Results indicated that joystick and point & teleport techniques provided the most comfortable use for individuals with ASD, followed by walk in place and trackball. On the other hand, flying and hand flapping did not provide comfortable use for individuals with ASD.