Inducing Vertigo using a Virtual Environmentby: Antoni Domingo Ortells 1.- Introduction. Vertigo, fear of heights, is a difficultphobia to treat because of the danger thatmay cause being on some high place with the subject. In this project we will try to induce some Vertigo into the subjects. So, the subjects will experiment fear but in a safe environment. 2.- Related WorkThere had been a lot of research on treatment of some phobias: acrophobia (Rothbaum, Hodges, Kooper, Opdyke, Willifo rd, & North, 1995), agorapho bia (Rothbaum, Hodges, Kooper, Opdyke, Willifo rd, & North, 1995 ) and claustrophobia (Botella C, Banos RM, Perpina C, Villa H, Alcaniz M, & Rey A,1998). Which leads that Virtual Reality can be used for phobia treatment. In the case of Vertigo, we know very well the effectiveness of the exposure of the subject in vivo (Emmelkamp&Felten, 1985). The firsts studies taken at the end of 1993 (Rothbaum, Hodges, Kooper, Opdyke, Williford& North, 1995) were a controlled experiment involving 7 persons in a control room and 10 subjects were exposed in seven weekly VR sessions. The results of this experiment were very promisin g and started a series of research initives.One other controlled experimentwas concerned with the treatment ofagoraphobia (Coble, et al.,1995). One of the lasts studies was done by the Delft University of Technology in collaboration with the University ofAmsterdam. This study tried to treat the acrophobia using a head mounted display. Our goal in this project is: is itpossible to treat people in virtual reality?So we can find out more about the characteristics of the virtual reality system. Another question we want to lookfor an answer is which factors play a roll in provoking a phobic response to heights?3.- Material. For this project we had a C.A.V.E., a Sensor Hat and 3 scenes. Main PC PC Cave 1 Projectors MoCap Server HatFig 2 . C.A.V.E. Pipeline Fig 1. C.A.V.E.
