IS THE VIRTUAL-REALITY A GENTLE TECHNOLOGY FOR HUMANS - AN EXPERIMENTAL-STUDY OF THE SAFETY FEATURES OF A VIRTUAL-REALITY SYSTEM

We are studying a novel concept of the on-line hospital system using a virtual environment called ''Hyper Hospital,'' The ''Hyper Hospital'' is a medical care system which is constructed in a distributed manner to the electronic information network using virtual reality (VR) as a human interface. In the present report, we studied the physiological and psychological responses of healthy subjects induced by the usage o f the VR in terms of fatigue. Twenty healthy young male subjects were exposed to the virtual reality system and they performed some psycholo gical tasks with a virtual nurse for 30 minutes. Several parameters of physiological, psychological, and subjective fatigue were measured. N one of the physiological or psychological parameters such as urinary c atecholamine release, EGG, etc. showed significant fatigue induced by our VR system. However, by using a standard questionnaire, some kinds of subjective fatigue were noted and they were thought to be indicatin g a direction of improvement for our VR system.