Ben Yang

VHard: An XR UI for Kinesthetic Rehearsal of Rock Climbing Moves

Joel Salzman, Jace Li, Ben Yang, Steven Feiner

IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 2024. Demo.

Two views of one grip. Left, a photo of a hand gripping a white climbing hold. Right, the same grip in VHard, where a translucent hand closes on the scanned hold and the hold is highlighted green where the hand touches it.
Fig. 1. A hand gripping the physical H10 hold of a MoonBoard, and the same grip in VHard, where the scanned hold is highlighted green to show where it is gripped.

Abstract

Rock climbers frequently struggle to complete climbs due to the difficulty of practicing precise movements without actually attempting them. A standard strategy is to kinesthetically rehearse the hand and body positions required while on the ground. However, the lack of live feedback severely hampers this method because climbers can only roughly estimate the distances and positions involved. We introduce VHard, an extended reality (XR) application that visualizes the precision and accuracy of hand placements on a metric digital twin of a MoonBoard climbing wall. VHard augments kinesthetic rehearsal with XR feedback in order to assist climbers in completing difficult boulder problems.

Video

Still from the video: a translucent hand on a green hold among scanned holds. Opens on YouTube.
Video 1. Rehearsing moves in XR, alongside footage of the same climbs on a real MoonBoard. 1 min 32 s; opens on YouTube.

Cite

J. Salzman, J. Li, B. Yang, and S. Feiner, “VHard: An XR UI for Kinesthetic Rehearsal of Rock Climbing Moves,” in Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 2024, pp. 638–639, doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct64951.2024.00188.

@inproceedings{salzman2024vhard,
  title={VHard: An XR UI for Kinesthetic Rehearsal of Rock Climbing Moves},
  author={Salzman, Joel and Li, Jace and Yang, Ben and Feiner, Steven},
  booktitle={2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct)},
  pages={638--639},
  year={2024},
  doi={10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct64951.2024.00188}
}