Traveling from the canals of Venice to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a set of elderly humans in Japan is seeing the sector — with out even leaving their seats.
It’s all way to digital fact, in addition to a crew on the University of Tokyo led by Kenta Toshima.
As a therapist, Toshima traveled the globe shooting 360-degree films to show his senior patients. His purpose becomes to assist them to find joy and motivation in life, using VR generation to permit folks who are unable to journey satisfy their wanderlust and see the arena once more.
“They wanted to see even greater of the locations from their reminiscences, consequently I felt that I may want to show them more through the use of virtual reality and showing them [these places] in 360,” he tells CNN Travel. “With VR, they can go searching however they had like to and enjoy the photos actively.”
Toshima then teamed up with the University of Tokyo lecturer and assistant professor Atsushi Hiyama, whose subject of study focuses on Geron-informatics.
Together they’re making use of era, such as VR, to assist Japan’s hyper-elderly society at the same time as additionally teaching energetic senior citizens to film and edit 360-degree motion pictures from their travels to present to their fewer cell friends.
“ninety% of people who are over 65 years antique are very energetic,” says Hiyama. “They do not need aid to stay by myself. For the energetic aged, it means that they may be participating in society.”
‘It takes them to a distinctive vicinity proper earlier than their eyes’
We attended one in every one of their sessions at the college. Our classmates ranged from 53 to 90 years old and had been studying about VR technology for approximately 12 months.
There, we met eighty two-yr-old Takeshi Maki, who advised us he had traveled to Hawaii together with his 360 camera.
“I actually have [friends who cannot travel], due to the fact I am over eighty years antique,” he explains. “When I showed [the footage] to my pals, they were so surprised. You realize most of the senior people cannot flow or travel, right? This digital camera can help them.”
According to Hiyama and Toshima, the VR travel mission works together with physical rehabilitation in nursing care centers.
They are hoping those virtual reality vacations can assist the aged patients with matters of the frame — and the mind.
“Those who’ve lived to eighty-ninety years, there aren’t such a lot of matters they haven’t for my part skilled,” Toshima tells us.
“When they see the VR, [it] takes them to an exceptional region proper earlier than their eyes. I saw human beings get up who don’t usually arise, who then start walking. It changed into so stunning.”
“Even if our physical and intellectual situations decline because of growing old, we can still enjoy and take part in society by means of using VR technology,” provides Hiyama. A person who went on a long-distance journey returned home after some years. Till then, his family had either no or very little information regarding his situation and well-being. In some thrilling cases, a person would never return. In spite of all these barriers and difficulties, people traveled; not always because they needed to, but many times, also because they loved to. And why not? Traveling not only takes us to distant lands and explains us with various people, but this also removes the dullness of our lives.
