Virtual Reality Physical Training Program

A Virtual Reality plaform that trains and empowers the user to alleviate pain, perform exercises accurately, and track progress.

My team and I are building a virtual reality application that enables users to perform physical therapy exercises in an immersive, data-rich environment anywhere they choose. We will employ physical therapists to contribute to a library of exercises. Using machine learning models trained on the user's locomotion data, this platform will tailor maximally effective exercise regimens to each user. A virtual reality humanoid trainer will mimic the user's movements and provide feedback. Additionally, users have the option to virtually paint their pain on the corresponding areas of the humanoid, which they will see diminish as they perform the exercises. 

"Among adults, 60% to 80% will experience back pain and 20% to 70% will experience neck pain that interferes with their daily activities during their lifetimes." [1] This is a huge problem worldwide. Therefore, our first cohort of physical training programs will comprise back and neck exercises. However, we will expand this platform to encompass a wider range of these programs.

We will make this adaptive exercise program available worldwide to anyone with a smartphone. 

This novel technology combines machine learning, virtual reality (VR), and physical training in a unique platform. Currently, VR technology is still very new and has mainly been used to make games; we have yet to realize its full potential. By applying learning strategies discovered within the cognitive sciences, we introduce an immersive physical training program unlike any prior applications of VR technology. We believe this platform has the potential not only to help people improve their health but to teach them how to manage pain.

Currently, the practice of physical therapy is limited to those who have sufficient time, resources, and health insurance. Our technology will expand this limited access to anyone who has a smartphone.

Over the next 12 months, we will:

Deploy a cardboard VR application to the Android and iPhone app store to make these exercises available to the global market.

Partner with physical therapists to deploy a premium version of the application on VR Headsets to their patients.

Onboard engineers, researchers, and business people in order to expand the product further and to advance research and development within the new field of physical training in VR.

We will:

Publish original research to further our understanding of human biomechanics and to expand the cognitive sciences field for the VR medium for learning.

Globally deploy cutting edge solutions backed by research. 

Seed virtual/augmented reality hardware to continuously expand the variety of exercises beyond the neck and back.

Get FDA approval and partner with insurance companies in order to disseminate our solutions to a wider market.

We outline three stages below:

1) Partner with physical trainers/therapists to design premium content for high fidelity VR headsets. We will build machine learning models based on this high fidelity data to advise users on how to perform the exercises effectively. 

2) Import content from 1) limited to the sensors available on a smartphone for use with cardboard VR.

3) Build an exercise marketplace for physical trainers/therapists to vend their exercise regimens to users for a small fee.

We have not released this product yet as it is in the prototype stage.

Approximately 40 million and 90 million US adults suffer from neck and back pain respectively [1][2]. At least 77% of the US population owns a smartphone. We can therefore assume that most neck and back pain sufferers in the US also own a smartphone. Cardboard VR headsets are easily accessible to anyone who has a smartphone. In three years, VR headset sales are projected to increase from 12 million to 60 million worldwide, and we will expand our focus to all types of physical training. We will leverage the prominence of VR to improve lives worldwide.

My team comprises a designer, two engineers, an operations expert, and an educator. Between the five of us, we have extensive experience with building software, designing products, expanding business, and teaching, and we are experts in our fields. We have been in conversations with a few physical therapists and researchers who have expressed interest in joining as advisors or partners and who have validated our methods and ways of thinking about the problem.

Our long-term sustainability and profitability strategy for high-fidelity VR headsets is based on the premium subscription model.

We will release the neck and back exercises as a smartphone VR app for free in order to expand access to this solution to anyone with a smartphone.

We are considering a subscription model for physical therapists to use this service to keep track of their clients' take-home exercises. 

We will apply for a medical device license in order to get the distribution of the headsets funded by insurance companies.

We will build an exercise marketplace for physical therapists and trainers to sell their exercises, and we will take a cut of the profit.

Many parts of VR Trainer are built on ongoing research. Solve will allow us to connect with the cognitive sciences and machine learning faculty in order to ensure that our product is rooted in science. Our goal is to heal people of their pain.

We believe that, with guidance from MIT faculty, we can iterate our solution to evolve as the problem evolves.

The connections we would make through Solve's extensive partner network would enable us to reach more people faster.

One of the major limitations of VR Trainer is that, in order to get high fidelity data from sensors, we would require a more expensive VR headset. So we are targeting two different platforms: Cardboard VR (cheap, pervasive, low fidelity data, limited amount of experiences) and VR headsets (costly (700$), high fidelity data, wider range of experiences). High fidelity VR headsets are prohibitively expensive, but with funding from Solve, we could scale up both platforms, making both cardboard VR and VR headsets available and accessible.