## 4 Discussion  
For older adults, both lack of balance ability and lack of balance confidence are major challenges that contribute to falls and activity avoidance. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of VR and RABT on balance ability and confidence in older adults. This topic is highly relevant because, while balance training can improve physical stability, if balance confidence remains unaddressed, individuals may still avoid daily activities due to fear of falling. Also, there is a question as to which training interventions are most effective within the older population that considers themselves as healthy, yet still have balance problems. Our results demonstrated that participants who underwent RABT with the Naviv-GATfor system showed improvements in balance ability post-training as measured by COP and BESS metrics, though these changes were not statistically significant. In the second analysis, specific balance parameters showed improvement, particularly AP MaxD in tandem stance with significant difference (\(p\) = 0.018) in the RABT group and ML RMS values during tandem stance (\(p\) = 0.045) in the VR group. The BESS results further supported these findings. The RABT group showed trends toward improvement, with a mean reduction of 2.09 points on firm surfaces and a more pronounced 3.69 points on foam surfaces. Intriguingly, greater improvements were observed on foam surfaces, which present a more challenging balance environment due to unreliable somatosensory information and increased demands on the vestibular system. This suggests that RABT may effectively enhance balance even under destabilizing conditions, though larger sample sizes would be needed to confirm statistical significance. Balance confidence, as measured by the ABC scale, showed statistically insignificant changes for both groups. Both groups were overall healthy and had a relatively high perceived balance even prior to the interventions, thus changes post training were not substantial. However, VR training had a unique effect on participants' self-awareness: post-training, a stronger negative correlation emerged between ABC scores and BESS errors (from R\({}^{2}\) = 0.00 pre-training to R\({}^{2}\) = 0.65 post-training), indicating that VR helped participants better align their perceived confidence with their actual balance ability. The analysis highlights the potential of VR interventions in not only improving balance performance but also in enhancing the relationship between participants' self-awareness and perceptual accuracy of their physical capabilities. The RABT group, while showing some initial correlation (R\({}^{2}\) = 0.51), did not demonstrate the same transformative effect observed in the VR intervention group. These findings highlight the complementary strengths of VR and RABT. While RABT shows trends toward objective balance enhancement in specific parameters, VR appears to improve self-awareness and confidence calibration. A combined or alternating approach leveraging both technologies could offer a holistic strategy for fall prevention in older adults, addressing both physical stability and psychological barriers to mobility. Further, according to these observations, it may lead to training enhancements: RABT, typically used in and limited to a laboratory setting, and VR-based training, which would be more appropriate in one's home setting, could both yield important improvements. Future studies with larger sample sizes would be valuable to further investigate the statistical significance of these observed trends. Conceptualization, L.A.T. ; methodology, L.A.T. and O.O. ; formal analysis, O.O. ; investigation, L.A.T. and O.O. ; resources, L.A.T. ; writing--original draft preparation, O.O. and L.A.T. ; writing--review and editing, O.O. and L.A.T. ; project administration, L.A.T. ; funding acquisition, L.A.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.