392141 Projekt "AR Exposure Therapy" (PjS) (SoSe 2017)

Summary
Augmented Reality exposure therapy to support people with certain fears, such as Arachnophobia.

Project Background & Aims
Lifetime prevalence of specific phobias is 15.6 %. With 22.7 million individuals affected and total costs of 850 € per patient, overall costs caused by specific phobia in Europe in 2010 were more than 19 billion € . More than half of the people suffering from a specific phobia are not even treated.

The solution:
The most effective treatment for phobic fear is referred to as exposure therapy. It is a procedure where participants are directly confronted with the feared object and instructed to observe the object or even to engage with it until the fear is attenuated. The “exposure therapy” procedure is highly intensive/aversive both for the patient and for the therapist.
A better solution and its problems:
Our work group has been conducting this kind of treatment using virtual reality (VR). The idea behind this is simple: if people have fear of spiders, they will not be keen on conducting exposure therapy with a real spider and will avoid seeking psychotherapy. VR has proven to be both affective (similar treatment effects to treatment in vivo – with real objects -) but is has its downsides (synthetic, expensive, relatively low emersion and presence, low knowledge transfer).

Project Description
The ultimate solution (our project):
The main goal of this project is the development of a new application for effective augmented reality exposure therapy (ARET).
What are the components of the AR system?

• AR reality system: that will be able to present small insects
• User interface that will be able to control the objects in the AR (presenting them and of possible control their movement
• Connection to the psychophysiology system (sending messages for specific events)

How will we work together?
We are researchers in clinical psychology at the University of Regensburg. The system development can be done wherever you are and at a later phase, we (in Regensburg) will evaluate the system with a clinical sample.

Would you like to see a demonstration?
Google -videos-: Youssef Shiban VR therapy

Would you like to read relevant empirical work from our group?
Here a few studies where we used virtual reality exposure therapy for spider phobia. In the current study, we aim at using a similar study design only using AR and not VR).

The core/required features of the setup are:

• 3D models of animals/insects, including rigging and animation
• Augmented reality user interface for smart glasses
• Implementation of therapy procedures
• Evaluation of the system (e.g. comparing AR with traditional VR approach)

The project should be implemented in Unity. The target platforms are Android-based smart glasses and when the team shows exceptional performance, the Microsoft HoloLens.

Requirements for participation, required level

Previous participation in the lecture Virtual Reality is required.