Snow Therapy

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  User View of snow man and cool temperature

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  View in Unity of Snowy World

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  pmdtechnologies hand recognition

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  Throwing a snowball

Inspiration

Inspired by high-end VR medical devices created to provide therapy to burn victims returning from the war in Afghanistan, the Skylight One team created an affordable system to aid burn victims along their road of recovery. The application transports patients from their hospital beds to one of two winter scenes. The patient interacts with wintery environments, playing games of skill that engage the mind and create positive feedback loops emphasizing the cooling environment A snow scene with falling snowflakes and calming music surround the user. The user throws snowballs and watches a temperature gauge cool down the virtual world, the longer the game is played.

What it does

This Virtual Reality experience provides an interesting world and game that will relax, cool down, and provide therapeutic hand-eye coordination for people in a hospital bed.

How we built it

Using gestigon's API and pmdtechnologies hand gesture recognition kit, we were able to import the API into Unity and add in a snow skybox. falling snow, and snow balls. The end game may be compiled and run on google android cardboard, or viewed in a higher VR kit like HTC Vive.

Challenges we ran into

Working with the hand gesture tool and getting the motion of throwing a snow ball was the biggest challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Including the pmdtechnologies API into the project and using it to create different hand motions from the samples e.g., grasping and throwing snowballs.

What we learned

How to combine pmdtechnologies and Unity for an interactive VR experience.

What's next for Snow Therapy

To improve the experience and entertainment for someone who is injured and hospitalized. Different worlds may be created in the future with a variety of activities. Hand gestures may help people who have had other injuries, including strokes, to regain their hand-eye coordination.

Built With

• android
• c#
• cardboard
• gestigon's-carnival-sdk
• htc-vive
• pmdtechnologies
• project-tango
• samsung
• unity
• vr