An Investigation on the Relationship Between Cybersickness and Heart Rate Variability when Navigating a Virtual Environment

In this study, we explore the physiological effect of cybersickness using heart rate variability (HRV) and examine the relationship between the physiological and subjective measurement of cybersickness when navigating a virtual environment (VE). To achieve these objectives, we conducted two experiments. In experiment 1, four types of forwarding translation method (teleportation + embodied control [EC], steering + EC, teleportation + instrumental control [IC], and steering + IC) were compared, while six types of rotation (yaw, pitch, roll, yaw + pitch, yaw + roll, and pitch + roll) were examined in experiment 2. The HRV analysis for experiment 1 revealed that the steering conditions yielded significantly higher low-frequency (LF) power (ms 2 ) than did the teleportation condition. In addition, the simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) results showed that the steering conditions produced stronger symptoms of cybersickness than did the teleportation conditions. For experiment 2, the yaw + roll and pitch + roll conditions had greater LF power (ms 2 ) than did the other four conditions. However, the SSQ indicated that the level of cybersickness was higher for the roll, yaw + roll, and pitch + roll conditions than for the other rotation conditions. The participants completed the four and six conditions over a limited period across two experimental days. However, the overall HRV and SSQ results for both experiments indicated no explicit additive effects of sickness symptoms. Based on these outcomes, this study verified the relationship between cybersickness, HRV, and SSQ during navigation in a VE.