This project explores how to use Virtual Reality, digital twins, and ergonomics to optimize real-life spaces for user interaction, focused on upper-limb amputees or people with upper-limb joint mobility issues.

The framework captures the person's body measurements using computer vision to calculate their reach envelope; then, with a digital twin of the target environment, it performs a reachability assessment and outputs a reach score based on how much the user can reach specific objects and the overall environment. Finally, the framework will use the information from the reach analysis to determine what changes in the environment are necessary to provide an optimal interaction for the user.

User-centered and ability-based design are big motivators of this work, following the idea that products and technology should adapt to users, not the other way around. The work was first presented at ISMAR 2024 in the IDEATExR workshop. The project is Raquel T. Cabrera-Araya's doctoral research and is a work-in-progress.