Judith Amores, Anna Fuste, Robert Richer and Pattie Maes. 2019. Deep Reality: An Underwater VR experience to promote relaxation by unconscious HR, EDA and brain activity biofeedback. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality (SIGGRAPH '19). ACM, Los Angeles, CA, USA, ACM 978-1-4503-6320-4/19/07. 10.1145/3306449.3328818

Abstract

Deep Reality is an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) experience that aims to decrease heart and respiration rate by subtle, almost imperceptible light flickering, sound pulsations and slow movements of 3D underwater creatures. Our goal is to improve relaxation by unconsciously influencing the body signals of the user by passively displaying audio-visual cues that are synchronized with a slower frequency of the user’s heart and breathing rate, as well as lighting changes of the environment that reflect its brain wave activity associated to relaxation. We monitor in real-time brain activity using the Muse flexible EEG headband and electrodermal activity (EDA) using an Empatica E4 wristband and dynamically adapt the virtual experience.