When Benno and Marijke founded the Dolphin Swim Club, they wanted to create extraordinary VR goggles. Benno: ‘These are normal VR goggles. Try them on.’ The sight is breathtaking: floating in the clearest water there are dolphins all around you. ‘But you are sitting in a chair. If you would be in the water, the experience would be even more intense. That’s what we wanted to create. And that was not possible with normal VR goggles.’ The Dolphin Swim Club succesfully applied for funds from SNN for UnderwaterVR goggles. Benno: ‘Thanks to SNN we could fund important research into the commercial viability of our plans, but also if we could use recycled plastics in the production process.’
Language: Dutch
In an interview with Computable, Johan Elbers of the Dutch healthcare institution ‘sHeerenloo, explains how he is always looking for new technologies to treat patients with a mental disability. As an innovation manager, he admits that some of the best applications have been developed with the patients’ personal wishes in mind. ‘The possibilities are endless, but do they really help these people? That’s why we always interview our patients first, to discover their needs. Swimming with dolphins is a good example. It’s impossible to take all our patients to Curaçao (a Dutch and that’s why, with the Dolphin Swim Club, we’re bringing the dolphins to our patients.’
The Dolphin Swim Club was invited to take part in the 20th Laval Virtual, one of the most important events in the world about virtual technologies and uses. Five days of great fun! The whole team assisted about 1,400 visitors to swim with the wild virtual dolphins. And about 600 visitors dared to go in the water and experience our Wild Dolphin Underwater VR. Again our dolphin friends managed to enchant many people of all ages. And as a dolphin joke, to finally have people swimming in tanks to meet them, while they themselves stay in their own home, the free oceans of the world.
During the Laval Virtual event, we also received an ACM SIGGRAPH Award. Needless to say, we are super proud of this achievement!
“Swimming with wild dolphins is something most can only dream of, and jumping into pools with captive animals has become increasingly controversial with environmentalists condemning it as cruel. But a Dutch non-profit believes it has found a way to bring people, especially the disabled, closer to such a joyful experience through the technological, immersive advances offered by virtual reality (VR).”
The Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad wrote a one-page report on the effectiveness of Virtual Reality on chronic pain treatment and as a relaxation method. The Dolphin Swim Club was mentioned as well. ‘The human brain can easily be fooled‘, says Marijke (founder of the Dolphin Swim Club). ‘Our brain can hardly distinguish a virtual experience from a real one’. Patients no longer have to fly all the way to Curaçao for so-called dolphin therapy, you can take a plunge and swim with the dolphins before going to bed.