ImmersifyVR utilizes virtual reality (VR) to offer story-driven experiences that empower others to become physically active, enabling anyone to become the protagonist and overcome daily limitations. This project is critical for the well-being of the elderly living in assisted living facilities. In 2017, around 31.4% of elderly living in assisted living facilities experienced major forms of depression; a lot of this is attributed to a lack of regular exercise, which also significantly increases the risk of various chronic health issues. As healthcare continues to improve due to technological advancements, longevity also increases, and the elderly population in the United States continues to grow. ImmersifyVR solves a problem that nobody can escape: aging. ImmersifyVR addresses both of these challenges by providing an engaging, interactive platform that encourages socialization as well as physical activity. Through experiencing fun experiences like virtual swimming, users benefit both mentally and physically. (146 words)
Our team was formed based on a common interest in VR and a deep-rooted passion for helping the elderly. Each of us has a personal connection to this cause, with many of us being heavily influenced by experiences with our own elderly family members. This common bond drives our dedication to developing solutions that can improve the lives of other older adults through innovative VR technology. As such, every team member actively contributes to the entrepreneurial and technical aspects of ImmersifyVR, but with unique individual specializations. Jonny is in charge of the product idea as well as some of the algorithms. Jaeho is in charge of most of the algorithms, as well as graphics for various 3D-modeled scenes in our application. Alan is in charge of outreach, such as updating LinkedIn and handling our weekly devlogs. Flynn is in charge of our website. (143 words)
Even in today’s world of advanced medical technology, the elderly population continues to face the significant challenge of limited access to engaging physical activities. This lack of activity often leads to broader issues like depression, reduced mobility, and diminished overall well-being in everyday life. Physical limitations, usually stemming from various chronic health conditions, further reduce the ability to lead an active life and increase the risk of injuries and diseases. Ultimately, this creates a vicious cycle in their lives as physical limitations lead to more diseases and injuries, causing greater physical limitations. For example, one of the most common problems the elderly face is balance-related, due to a lack of stretching and strengthening of the muscles. Exercise, if not done properly, can be extremely dangerous, which is why 33% of those over 65 have severe falls yearly, leading to almost 10,000 deaths. This poses a safety issue for the seniors, as well as a heavy drop in motivation and trust to exercise. Furthermore, people with chronic diseases often struggle with exercise, with more self-reported inactivity from seniors ages 65 to 74, compared to the same age group with no chronic disease. This not only demonstrates the physical constraints but also the psychological and logistical barriers they face, such as lack of motivation and resources. Addressing this gap is critical, as improvements in physical activity can significantly enhance their quality of life, reduce healthcare costs, and increase a sense of empowerment. Even modest attempts for improvement can grow into a major impact, which is why we chose to develop the team and product of ImmersifyVR. With the help of virtual reality, our application prioritizes accessibility, ease of use, and engagement with a story-based experience to maximize motivation for a new life of activity. (293 words)
Our innovation utilizes virtual reality to provide a stress and danger-free environment for the elderly and disabled to overcome daily limitations. Especially for seniors, going out to exercise, for example, going to a swimming pool, can put them at extreme risk of harm. However, virtual reality allows anyone to immerse themselves in a realistic experience in any safe space they choose. Our application also provides motivation to exercise through entertaining VR activities like swimming to catch fish. To strive for more accessibility, we specifically targeted low to moderate-intensity exercises like swimming. This prevents exhaustion and injuries, allowing for longer physical activity sessions and a safer experience for people of all physical abilities. Our product is unique in its story-driven experiences and prioritization of ease of use and accessibility. Other VR experiences similar to ours currently in the market either do not prioritize accessibility or lack engagement. Instead of providing generalized and basic exercise, our application combines physical activity into an engaging environment. One example of a moderate-intensity workout in our application involves swimming in a virtual beach and ocean environment, involving realistic swimming motions to move around and capture fish. The incentive to progress in the game-like story and interact with the goals like catching fish encourages the user to exercise while also being provided entertainment. The intuitive controls optimize comfortability and simulate realistic swimming motions, allowing users to engage in a fully immersive workout experience that promotes physical activity, all within the safety and comfort of their living environment. This product is primarily designed to help individual users suffering from health challenges, particularly depression or physical health issues. Our product can help alleviate symptoms and improve the quality of life for these users by providing a talking point for seniors in retirement homes and improving mobility and overall health. However, there are also broader societal implications for our product. 12% of humankind is above 65 years old, a number that is expected to grow steadily due to advancements in healthcare, medical technology, and an increasing life expectancy. This increase in longevity opens up a new opportunity to address the long-term care needs of individuals who will live into their 80s, 90s, and beyond. This trend points to a future where more people will need support as they age. Since everyone will become old in the future, they will likely struggle with similar mobility issues or mental health issues, which our product addresses with engaging exercise. Exercising is observed to result in drastic improvement in health and mobility, which will also decrease the risk of accidents and injuries. Protection is necessary due to the novel approach of our solution, and as such, many aspects of our product can be patented: our customizable swimming algorithm and user interface designed for seniors, focusing on simplicity and ease-of-use, our realistic aquatic environments and swimming simulator with haptic feedback, the information about virtual reality or lessons to use the headset in our app, and the game-like system that rewards users for accurate swim strokes or completing challenges. In terms of the technical aspects, the application is created mainly through the Unity Engine’s XR library, a set of tools and APIs that enable developers to create and deploy immersive experiences across various virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality platforms. We also use Github, a version control software, to maintain different updates of our application, and Blender, a 3D modeling software, to create certain objects we can’t find anywhere else or want to customize ourselves. (580 words)
To validate our innovation, we focused on engaging directly with our target user group through several visits to Chateau Cupertino, a local senior retirement home. Our first encounter occurred on July 20, 2024, when we presented our basic idea to Marie, the activities coordinator. This session was an important step in gauging early interest in our product and gathering initial feedback from someone experienced in the senior living environment. Marie's experience has been crucial for understanding the residents' particular needs and wishes, which in turn helped us adapt and ensure that we were ready for our second trip.
After this initial meeting, we held our first formal round of user testing on October 12, 2024, at Chateau Cupertino. This session allowed us to observe potential users interacting with our prototype and gave us concrete, actionable feedback on its usability, effectiveness, and overall appeal. Watching user interactions firsthand highlighted specific areas for improvement, revealing both strengths and weaknesses in our design. Feedback gathered in this test session helped shape our next development cycles and enabled us to improve our product based on real-world user experience directly. These real-world interactions with potential users at Chateau Cupertino have been crucial in validating our core assumptions and ensuring our innovation aligns with their needs and preferences, providing a solid foundation for further development.
As we have progressed, we have reached a minimum viable product (MVP) which demonstrates the essential aspects of our invention. This MVP features basic breaststroke swimming mechanics within a simulated beach/ocean environment. The MVP enables us to show the main functionality of our product and get more feedback from users, in a more collaborative and immersive manner. Currently, our development work is mainly focused on improving the ocean environment's realism and interactivity. We recognize that a compelling and immersive environment is crucial to the overall user experience, and we are committed to continually improving this aspect of our product. We are also exploring how to extend the diversity of the ocean, perhaps even introducing other forms of marine life and underwater scenery. Such ongoing work is a prerequisite for achieving a fully immersive and powerful user experience. (357 words)
ImmersifyVR is designed to be utilized by seniors living in assisted living facilities or retirement homes but is also accessible to anyone with physical limitations or general interest in our application. With the increasing risk of health and diseases, our target demographic is in dire need of regular exercise, which our product brings. The size of the market is substantial, as the current count of individuals abiding in assisted living homes is over 800,000 in the US alone, not including the number of people currently abiding in retirement homes who also overlap with our target demographic. Although seniors would greatly benefit as the users of our product, they are not our direct customers. Similar to how we approached our visits to Chateau Cupertino, our direct customers, or our first point of contact before our users, would be the directors of assisted living facilities and retirement homes. The facilities' directors or activity managers are searching for activities for the residents, so we would first contact them to distribute our product to the seniors in the facility. (176 words)
Our innovation mainly competes with other virtual reality applications and programs designed for seniors like MyndImmersive and Rendever, however, they don’t focus on engaging exercise as we do. MyndImmersive uses immersive therapeutic VR technology focusing on care for age-related diseases, while Rendever focuses on creating and sharing social experiences to overcome isolation. We also focus on addressing the lack of care for age-related diseases, but our product does this by offering story-driven experiences. Through our experience, users can exercise while engaging in a story with a game-like structure, making the experience a social talking point all while tackling the physical activity, By prioritizing accessibility and engageability, our innovation empowers users to become physically active and overcome physical health issues. (119 words)
We have already successfully tested our application with seniors at Chateau Cupertino, a local retirement home. We learned from this user-testing the main struggles our customers faced while using the product, as well as the flaws in our planning, leading us to possible improvements. Building on this success, we will host trials at several other nearby retirement homes and assisted-living facilities, serving our customers to gain more critical feedback. Our best initial users to target would be seniors to test assumptions, understand our target consumer’s main points, and tailor our application to complement our focus on social impact. To contact these users, we rely on strategic partnerships with local retirement homes and assisted living facilities, positioning their managers as our best initial customers. This strategy positions us to effectively attract and sell to management, get our product distributed to seniors, and polish our offering based on user feedback. (148 words)
We learned from our pilot program at Chateau Cupertino that most seniors don't have a VR headset. To address this, we offer a rental service for each visit with variable pricing depending on the number of Quest headsets required, encouraging larger groups. For a visit to a retirement/assisted living home 1-5 headsets would be $10 per headset, 5-15 headsets would be $8 per headset, and for 15 or more headsets, it would be $6 per headset. We estimate around 1-2 visits each month, hence making it more affordable than the $500 purchase of a Quest headset($25/month for 24 months). However, for those who own a virtual reality headset, the individual application can also be purchased outright for $25 for their enjoyment.
Key revenue streams include rental fees from the headsets and sales from selling individual copies of the application. This pricing strategy is competitive enough to cover our costs of providing and expanding the service. Major costs include $10/month for the upkeep of our website and hosting, $2,000/month for staffing and labor, and $500/headset for the purchase of VR headsets, especially for larger events. Equipment, installed properly and timely for multiple facilities, must be accompanied by people caring for each establishment. This provides an assurance of quality and reliability, without which the growth of our customer base would not occur. Balancing these costs and optimizing all our revenue streams will enable us to bring a sustainable and impactful solution to seniors and assisted-living facilities that can enjoy immersive VR experiences for quality improvement. (260 words)
As of now, we have access to a handful of Meta Quest 3 headsets, which we have used to user-test at Chateau Cupertino, but are not enough to expand. To get started with expansion, we would require funds primarily to purchase additional VR headsets and labor, which are necessary for our rental service. Additionally, we need funds for basic functions such as website domain renewal and general marketing to promote our product.
The cost to develop and market the product involves significant investments in acquiring proprietary assets, pursuing protection for intellectual property, and hiring additional members to build our solution further. These funds would be pursued directly from supporting customers and grants like the NSF's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. (121 words)
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