Abstract
To investigate flexible adaptation of visual system, we developed a system to provide a user an artificial oculomotor function to control directions of both eyes. The system named “Virtual Chameleon” consists of two CCD cameras independently controlled and a head-mounted display. The user can control each tracking directions of two cameras with sensors set to both hands so that the user can get independent arbitrary view fields for both eyes. We performed fundamental experiments to evaluate capability to evaluate adaptation to use of Virtual Chameleon and effects on the user's capabilities. Eleven healthy volunteers with normal and corrected-to-normal vision participated in the experiments. The experiments were tests to find out each position of targets put in both side of a subject. In the experiments, a condition using Virtual Chameleon and a condition without it was adopted. We obtained accuracy rates and time intervals to find out target positions as experimental results. The experiments showed all of volunteers became able to actively control independent visual axes and correctly understood two different views by using Virtual Chameleon, even though two independent view fields yielded binocular rivalry to volunteers and binocular rivalry reduced human capabilities compared to cases without Virtual Chameleon.