Biofeedback: Another way of interacting with Virtual Reality

Can you imagine being able to control a virtual environment with your emotions? Or having a game adapt to your needs based on how nervous you get? More and more immersive Virtual Reality applications are incorporating biosensors, especially in the academic world. This combination can help improve human performance and well-being.

Immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) has revolutionized how we interact with digital environments due to its immersive capabilities, but when combined with a biofeedback system, this technology reaches a new level of interaction and personalization.

Biofeedback is a technique that acts as an immediate reflection of an individual’s physiological response to stimuli.

1. An iVR application is created, and a biofeedback system is planned.
2. Biosensors are selected to capture a physiological signal (such as heart rate (HR) or breathing).
3. These data are analysed using algorithms (artificial intelligence) to interpret the individual’s emotional state. For example, an increase in heart rate could indicate stress.
4. The interpreted information is displayed in the virtual environment through visual or auditory systems that can be more obvious (such as directly showing the Heart rate) or more subtle (modifying the environment or the difficulty of the experience).
5. This biofeedback system helps the individual understand their physiological response and become aware of how to control it.

We conducted a review of 560 studies to analyze how biosensors are used in combination with iVR, and here’s what we discovered:

• There is no consensus on how to use this combination or how to design applications.
• This combination is predominantly used in Psychology and Medicine, although its use is also growing in areas such as Education or Risk Prevention.
• The most monitored signals are HR (53.3%), electrodermal activity, and electroencephalography. Surprisingly, eye-tracking is not used as much despite being incorporated into some virtual reality devices.
• Mostly, Desktop 6DOF devices are used because, being connected to a computer, they have more power and greater capacity to connect in real-time with biosensors.
• Experiences are mostly passive (41.6%), using biosensors only to view physiological data and not for interaction. On the other hand, 40.5% of experiences are interactive. However, only in 17.3% of experiences is a biofeedback system used that utilizes biosensor data for interaction.

You can find these results and much more in our recent paper titled “A systematic review of wearable biosensor usage in immersive virtual reality experiences” in the journal Virtual Reality.

This is a very promising field because it combines several disciplines such as software development and medicine or education. We need to continue working to establish a common framework for the use of these biosensors and explore what else they can offer us. The possibilities are limitless.

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