Afraid of Spiders? Phobia treatment with Augmented Reality Spiders

The folks at the HITLab New Zealand, my former research lab, have created an amazing tool for the potential treatment of spider phobia. Andreas Duenser, Adrian Clark and Sam Corbett-Davies are using a Microsoft Kinect and video-based head-mounted displays to display virtual spiders with amazingly accurate physics interactions. See for yourself (Youtube Link). I can see this technology being used for a variety of phobia treatments and also for physical/occupational therapy for reaching/grasping virtual objects.