Effect of Augmented Reality Affordance on Motor Performance: In the Sport Climbing

Abstract

Conventional sport climbing instructions have been made by showing a demonstration of an instructor and pointing the positions of the hands and feet one by one. Therefore, it has been consistently requested to develop a way for a learner to observe the demonstration in real-time and climb as instructed even in the absence of an instructor. The objectives of this study were to propose an augmented reality affordance suitable for the indoor sport climbing environment and evaluate its effectiveness. This study developed a projection-based augmented reality affordance system that projected character animation onto the artificial climbing structure so a novice could climb the structure based on the movement of the character. An instructor can spontaneously create and provide climbing postures and motions to the learner through this. Moreover, a learner can train repeatedly without the help of the instructor after selecting the route the learner wants to train. This study compared the performance evaluation scores before and after a lesson between the conventional group and the augmented reality affordance group to examine the effects on exercise performance. The results showed that the application of augmented reality affordance to sport climbing was as effective as the conventional instruction method.