ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the age and gender-related pedestrian behaviors while crossing the road in the immersed virtual reality environment. In ecological psychology, gap crossing can be considered as the matter of perceiving one's capability of action in relation to the properties of the crossing environment. A main challenge for improving the mobility of visually impaired and blind people is the development of electronic travel aids (ETAs) that improve mobility beyond the mobility allowed by the long cane. ETAs consist of three components: a sensory component, a component that transforms the detected information into the information to be delivered to the perceiver, and a display component. Locomotor pointing or, the skill of precisely aiming the foot at specific targets during locomotion, has been shown to be regulated by a tight coupling between perception and action. Locomotor pointing is that it has almost exclusively been studied in the laboratory and in high-performance sport settings, limiting the generalizability to every-day motor control.
