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Speed of visual flow affects comfortable walking speed
Abstract
When a person is instructed to walk at a comfortable speed, their actual
walking speed is influenced by the velocity of visual flow that they
experience. This is a surprising result, given that "walking
comfortably" would seem to depend on purely biomechanical factors. To
demonstrate this result, we utilized a computer controlled treadmill
with a 6' by 10' walking surface, surrounded by three 8' by 8'
projection screens oriented to provide an approximately 180 degree
horizontal field of view. Users were able to walk at any speed of their
choosing on the treadmill, with the speed of the treadmill belt
automatically adjusting as needed. Ten subjects participated. Each
subject had three minutes to gain familiarity with the user-controlled
treadmill. Following this, each subject was directed to walk comfortably
in three different conditions, visually slower (0.5X), visually same
(1.0X) and visually faster (2.0X) than their walking speed. The practice
and each of the three conditions on the treadmill were separated by five
minutes of walking around in an actual hallway. The conditions were
randomly ordered for each subject. Subjects on average chose 1.41 m/s
for the visually slower condition, 1.21 m/s for the visually faster
condition and 1.29 m/s for the visually same condition. This indicates
that subjects use the speed of the visual flow when deciding their own
comfortable walking speed. The result is consistent with a previous
finding of ours, using the same treadmill but with the belt speed under
computer control, that the speed at which walk/run and run/walk
transitions occur is also affected by the speed of visual flow (Mohler
et al., 2004, SIGGRAPH-APGV).
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