Enhancing experience: Investigating the impact of different personal perspectives in virtual reality with lower limb rehabilitation robots on participants' motivation, experience, and engagement

Combining virtual reality (VR) with rehabilitation robots has the potential to enhance rehabilitation training and neural functional recovery. However, there is limited research on designing VR scenes and evaluating the impact of such systems on participants' cognitive and experiential aspects when using rehabilitation robots. This study aimed to examine the effects of different gaming modes (first-person perspective and third-person perspective) and robot involvement on participants' motivation, experience, task load, and engagement. Thirty-two participants underwent gait rehabilitation training, providing feedback on their experiences after each condition. The findings revealed that the first-person perspective mode increased motivation, experience, task performance, and engagement. On the other hand, robot-assisted participation improved motivation but decreased the overall experience. These results indicate that the first-person perspective mode takes precedence over the third-person perspective mode in terms of embodied gaming and the development of rehabilitation tasks.