Metaverse-Driven Immersive Therapy: Reducing Air Travel Anxiety for Individuals with Autism

After looking at adaptive VR more broadly, I wanted to find out whether similar technology had already been applied specifically to air travel. I found a 2026 open-access conference paper called Metaverse-Driven Immersive Therapy: Reducing Air Travel Anxiety for Individuals with Autism. This is particularly relevant because, unlike the previous adaptive VR research, this project is already built around the experience of flying.

The researchers are developing a VR system for autistic children and people with social phobia that simulates parts of the air-travel experience before the real journey takes place. The virtual experience includes boarding the aircraft, finding a seat, interacting with cabin crew and other passengers, experiencing in-flight conditions and disembarking. The aim is to allow somebody to become familiar with these situations within a controlled environment before having to encounter them during an actual flight.

What makes this project more interesting than a standard airport VR tour is that the environment is intended to be personalised and adaptive. The proposed system analyses both verbal and non-verbal behaviour, including speech, facial expressions, gestures, posture, eye contact and physiological reactions. The researchers propose using this information to determine how the user is responding to what is happening and then alter the VR experience accordingly. For example, if somebody shows signs that a particular event is becoming distressing, the adaptation system could modify the scene rather than continuing to expose everybody to exactly the same experience.

The proposed setup also includes the possibility of using additional devices such as cameras, posture sensors, a smartwatch and microphone alongside the VR headset. This is particularly interesting when considered alongside my previous research into adaptive VR, because it again demonstrates the possibility of using behavioural or physiological information to create an environment that responds differently to each person.

Familiarisation Versus Regulation

Where this paper becomes particularly useful for my project is in identifying what the system is actually trying to achieve. Its main purpose is preparation and familiarisation before air travel. The user experiences the virtual flight in a safe and controlled setting so that boarding, interacting with staff and being inside an aircraft are less unfamiliar when they eventually encounter them in real life.

This connects to ideas I had already been considering around acclimatisation. VR could potentially allow a traveller to repeatedly experience aspects of flying that might otherwise be completely unfamiliar before their first encounter with them. This could include the sound of security equipment, boarding announcements, aircraft noises, changes in cabin lighting or other predictable parts of the journey. The important advantage would be that the user could experience these things within an environment where they have more control over repetition and exposure.

However, this also exposes a possible limitation. Familiarisation can help somebody prepare for what is expected to happen, but air travel is not completely predictable. A rehearsal cannot remove a delayed flight, an unexpected gate change, a crowded security queue or a sudden increase in noise. This connects directly to my previous research showing that autistic support needs can change when a journey stops following the expected structure.

For my project, this creates an important distinction

preparing someone to cope with the airport before travelling and

supporting them to regulate when they are already inside the airport and something becomes overwhelming.

Where Could This Be Pushed Further?

The paper has made me interested in whether some of the same technology could be transferred from a pre-travel therapeutic setting into the live travel environment.

At the moment, the proposed system is essentially:

experience the difficult environment virtually → become more familiar with it → encounter the real environment later.

My research is beginning to suggest another possibility:

encounter the real airport environment → recognise that regulation is becoming difficult → temporarily access an individually controlled immersive environment → regulate → continue the journey.

This would shift VR from being primarily a rehearsal tool to potentially becoming a live regulation tool.

That could be particularly relevant to shared airport spaces. My primary research has already questioned whether quiet and Sunflower lounges genuinely accommodate different sensory profiles. If an autistic traveller could temporarily create an individually controlled immersive environment within a shared space, the airport would not necessarily have to prescribe one definition of what “calm” should look or sound like.

The adaptive technology in this paper makes that possibility particularly interesting because the virtual environment does not necessarily have to remain fixed. In principle, it could respond to how the individual is reacting rather than expecting them to continually manually adjust everything themselves.

Limitations

It is important not to overstate what this paper has achieved. The system is described by the authors as work in progress and under testing, and the target population is primarily autistic children rather than independent autistic adults. The authors report promising preliminary usability and system-development results, but this is not evidence that the intervention has been proven to reduce anxiety during real-world air travel.

This means I should use the project as an emerging technological precedent, rather than evidence that adaptive VR is already an established solution.

Reflection

This paper is useful because it brings together three areas that have already emerged within my project: autism, adaptive immersive technology and air travel. It shows that researchers are already exploring personalised VR experiences that respond to an autistic user's behaviour while simulating parts of the flying experience.

However, its main focus remains preparation before the journey. That leaves me with a question that feels increasingly relevant to my own research:

Could adaptive immersive technology move beyond preparing autistic people for air travel and instead support personalised regulation while the journey is actually happening?

Metaverse-Driven Immersive Therapy: Reducing Air Travel Anxiety for Individuals with Autism — Thaher et al., 2026. This is the