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 response of healthy subjects induced by the usage of the VR in terms of fatigue. Twenty healthy young male subjects were exposed to the virtual reality system and they performed some psychological tasks with a virtual nurse for 30 minutes. Several parameters of physiological, psychological, and subjective fatigue were measured. None of the physiological or psychological parameters such as urinary catecholamine release, ECG, 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 indicating a direction of improvement for our VR system.