Ames, Iowa — Iowa State University researchers are getting a National Science Foundation grant to study if people who get cybersick while using virtual reality headsets can adapt over time.
ISU psychology professor Jonathan Kelly predicts virtual reality will have an increasingly bigger role to play in education, work and social life, and researchers want to make sure everyone can have equal access to it without feeling woozy.
The researchers already know women tend to experience motion sickness from VR more often than men. Now they want to find out if people who get cybersick can adapt to virtual reality and eventually not feel sick. Kelly says there are tools that can help narrow peoples’ fields of vision while using virtual reality. They’re kind of like training wheels that gently expose someone to VR.
He says researchers want to see virtual reality be as accessible as possible, especially as it becomes more widely used. The grant is for 600-thousand-dollars.
