Virtual Weight Lifting

Anchor Lede: Youre in an airplane exit row and asked whether you can remove the door if theres an emergency. Most of us wouldnt really know for sure. But soon a virtual reality tool might tell youby simulating weight lifting.

Randy Atkins: Engineers are testing the concept in an immersive virtual reality environment at the University of Wisconsin, where people wear 3-D goggles over their eyes and electrodes on their arm muscles. Professor Rob Radwin then asks them to lift animated objects.

Rob Radwin: The muscle activity we that record controls the simulation so that if you produce enough muscle contractions you can make the objects move.

Randy Atkins: Dont try, though, and your hand goes right through the objectlike youre a ghost. Use too much muscle, and you might throw it through the virtual roof.

Rob Radwin: So we can have people perform exertions without putting them at risk of dropping objects or having a problem with lifting something that might hurt them.

[