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An experiment on a nonclinical sample to investigate influences of virtual reality (VR) on dissociation, mindfulness, and self-efficacy is reported. The participants were immersed for 20 minutes with a VR system in a large virtual apartment and have been charged to look around and find a set of objects previously observed on pictures. Questionnaires pre- and postimmersion were administered to measure the levels of such psychological constructs; cybersickness was assessed as well. Results showed an upward trend in dissociation and a significant increase of mindfulness after immersion in the VR environment. No influences on self-efficacy were found. Findings are discussed with reference to past studies, where a different picture emerged, by considering possible differences due to changes in technology and context.

Since several years scientists are carrying on research about innovative systems, based on robotics, mechatronics devices and IT tools – especially the graphical ones – to support patients in rehabilitation programs for rescuing from various brain damages due to adverse events as stroke. Training sessions with a combination of robot and virtual reality (VR) lead to better rehabilitation outcomes than using only a robot and evidence from the field proved the importance of the use of VR interfaces in rehabilitation. The main aim of such a kind of environments is to monitor, motivate and drive the patient during the rehabilitation sessions. These systems mainly provide motor guidance and multimedia communication channels also measuring patients' performance and other observable variables. The approach implemented is usually based on gaming, where the patient has the key role to perform certain tasks or movements for controlling the game in the correct way and exercise the injured part. According to daily experience from physiotherapists, different aspects related to the physical and self-perceived patients' state revealed to have a fundamental role in influencing the rehabilitation session. Indeed, the treatment result depends not only on motor skills but also on patient's personal behavior and feelings that are not directly investigable, observable and measurable from outside. In other words this kind of elements can only be assessed by subjective measurements (as questions, interviews, narratives) revealing the point of view of the patient. Moreover, the emotional state has implications at different levels: on one hand, it is important to evaluate if the single rehabilitation session affects the emotional state of the patient, on the other, if the performance was influenced by this state. Some answers of a questionnaire administrated to post-stroke patients in a previous study underlined also the need for the patient to focus his/her attention on the trained body portion and the relevance of a visual feedback on movements to increase self-awareness on the action performed, avoiding any possible distraction derived from other kind of tasks and related visual/auditory stimuli. Patient-centered models of care are actually becoming increasingly common among rehabilitation clinical settings. They help to focus the therapy on improving the treatment of those deficiencies that most influence the quality of life of the patient. Another important aspect is represented by the relationship with the caregiver that in virtually assisted rehabilitation would not be direct anymore and will need to be mediated without completely loosing natural interaction. According to this patient centered vision, and in order to reduce possible side effects related to semi-automatic rehabilitation systems, it has been studied and developed a system which has not the aim of merely entertain the patient but to focalize the rehabilitation on him/her as a proactive character aware of what is happening and of the quality of the work performed.

This paper describes the planning and the implementation of a serious game (SG) for the improvement of attention skills in children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) to promote learning and autonomous management of impulsive behaviors and to inhibit irrelevant thoughts. The SG, called Antonyms, is a personal computer videogame consisting of a series of activities, each eliciting the tendency to respond in an immediate, inadequate way based on the Dual Pathway Model proposed by Sonuga-Barke. Children must block such a tendency, reflect upon the situation and find the nonintuitive solution to foster self-regulation skills. Antonyms consists of three mini-games in a single framework. It is designed for educational and rehabilitation settings. The expected outcome is an increase in the ability to keep attention focused on the relevant elements of situations that children face in their everyday life.

Being reintegrated at work after an accident constitutes an important milestone to recover a good quality of life, especially for severely injured people forced on a wheelchair after a trauma. The presented framework exploits virtual reality technologies with the aim of supporting these people in gaining awareness of their new conditions, providing them training in simulated and riskless environments. During the training, that addresses key aspects related to mobility, upper body preservations and return to work, the behaviors of the users are tracked to assess their functional level. The evaluation of these data, in addition to the expertise of the clinical personnel, is used to determine the wheelchairs user’s health condition, which is properly formalized in a semantic data model. This model then allows inferring the jobs that are still suitable for each specific user and the most appropriate level of difficulty of the tasks proposed in the virtual environments.

The life cycle of an industrial product goes through several stages, from the initial idea to the finished product, and on to the purchase and recycling. Virtual reality environments (VRE) allow the user to interact with a digital representation of a product, and so can be used to perform aesthetical, ergonomic, functional tests as well to support customer decisions in the selling process; mainly for customized products. In this contribution, ITIA-CNR presents two important applications in the shoes context: VRShoe and MagicMirror. VRShoe is a VRE for designing shoe aesthetics. MagicMirror, currently under development, is an augmented reality (AR) system for supporting the decision-making processes of customer customized shoes.

The use of mechanical/robotic devices and of IT based applications in the post-stroke rehabilitation is one of the main challenges in applied research in health sector. Among the wide spectrum of systems, it seems that the focus is still much on the system itself, as a technological whole, and less on the key actor, that is the patient. In this paper a supporting system for post-stroke rehabilitation, based on a 2D/3D real time interface, is presented. It aims at enhancing the point of view of the patients by showing them the movements they are performing through an avatar and by presenting some qualitative aspects of the exercises that can help the patients to be more aware of, and eventually improve, their performance.

This paper presents an overview of the use of virtual reality in physical rehabilitation and some thoughts about implementations of the virtual environment (VE) applied to a rehab robot. The point of view is not just technical but also based on the aims of the technology itself from a user's point of view. Objective of this paper is to present an initial study on virtual reality interface applied to a robot for shoulder rehabilitation. A reflection about anxiety and boredom emotions guides through an analysis of possible improvements of a first simple environment that facilitates patients' movements.

Some times, when you have the experience in a shop to buy shoes, it happens that you cannot find your preferred model. Starting from this simple problem, a new concept of shoes shop model comes out: the customer doesn’t use a pre-built set of product samples but he can digitally customize in the shop the shoes, try-on the shoes in augmented reality and then order their realization. This type of approach opens new ways to the shop concept moving from concept of mass production to the idea of mass customization. In this field ITIA is carrying on, inside the CEC-Made-Shoe Project, some research activities finalized to the support of the try-on process of customized shoes with two systems, called MagicMirror (MM) and FootGlove (FG), for the feelings of wearing shoes. In this article, last results and improvements to MM and FG prototypes are presented.