ADVANCED VIRTUAL REALITY HEADSET BASED TRAINING TO IMPROVE YOUNG DRIVERS’ LATENT HAZARD ANTICIPATION ABILITY

Driving safety among young novice driver is one of the largest concern in the transportation domain. Many Paper-based or PC- based training program have been developed over the years to train the young novice driver to improve their driving skills (Hazard Anticipation). This training programs does help young novice driver to improve their situational awareness and so the hazard anticipation skills. But, there is one common problem with most of the currently available training programs. They are not very immersive, because such training program mostly provide plain view of the training scenario’s along with some description about the scenario and the subject trained in such training method needs to translate the provided knowledge in the plain view into the real-world driving. An Advanced training program on risk awareness and perception was developed and evaluated in Oculus rift platform. The primary objective is to train the young novice driver in the Virtual reality headset based risk awareness and perception training program and evaluate the trained driver in the driving simulator against the placebo trained young novice driver. The Virtual reality headset based risk awareness and perception training program (V-RAPT) is based on 3M Error-based Training approach where the driver will have 80 horizontal degrees’ and 90 vertical degrees’ field of view. Thirty-six drivers will receive training in the respective training methods- V-RAPT (Virtual reality headset based risk awareness and perception training), RAPT (PC- based risk awareness and perception training) and placebo training. Twelve young novice driver trained in the V-RAPT group will served as experimental group. Twenty-four other young novice will receive training in the RAPT and Placebo training respective will serve as control group. After training all three-group trained driver will be evaluated in the advanced driving simulator and the eye movement of the all thirty-six participants are recorded and measured. Vehicle measures such as acceleration, velocity and brake position is also recorded. The drivers’ score will based on whether or not their eye-fixations indicated recognition of potential risks in different high risk driving situations. The evaluation driver included six scenarios used in the V-RAPT training (near transfer scenarios) and four scenarios that were not used in the V-RAPT training (far transfer scenarios). Drivers who received the V-RAPT training are expected to drive more safely than the drivers who received either training. The V-RAPT trained drivers are expected to glance on regions (Hazard anticipation) where potential risks might appear than the drivers’ trained in the RAPT and Placebo training method. Further, The V-RAPT trained drivers are expected have slower average velocity and better brake position (Hazard mitigation) are compared to the driver trained in the other two training method

Augmenting low-fidelity flight simulation training devices via amplified head rotations

Due to economic and operational constraints, there is an increasing demand from aviation operators and training manufacturers to extract maximum training usage from the lower fidelity suite of flight simulators. It is possible to augment low-fidelity flight simulators to achieve equivalent performance compared to high-fidelity setups but at reduced cost and greater mobility. In particular for visual manoeuvres, the virtual reality technique of head-tracking amplification for virtual view control enables full field-of-regard access even with limited field-of-view displays. This research quantified the effects of this technique on piloting performance, workload and simulator sickness by applying it to a fixed-base, low-fidelity, low-cost flight simulator. In two separate simulator trials, participants had to land a simulated aircraft from a visual traffic circuit pattern whilst scanning for airborne traffic. Initially, a single augmented display was compared to the common triple display setup in front of the pilot. Starting from the base leg, pilots exhibited tighter turns closer to the desired ground track and were more actively conducting visual scans using the augmented display. This was followed up by a second experiment to quantify the scalability of augmentation towards larger displays and field of views. Task complexity was increased by starting the traffic pattern from the downwind leg. Triple displays in front of the pilot yielded the best compromise delivering flight performance and traffic detection scores just below the triple projectors but without an increase in track deviations and the pilots were also less prone to simulator sickness symptoms. This research demonstrated that head augmentation yields clear benefits of quick user adaptation, low-cost, ease of systems integration, together with the capability to negate the impact of display sizes yet without incurring significant penalties in workload and incurring simulator sickness. The impact of this research is that it facilitates future flight training solutions using this augmentation technique to meet budgetary and mobility requirements. This enables deployment of simulators in large numbers to deliver expanded mission rehearsal previously unattainable within this class of low-fidelity simulators, and with no restrictions for transfer to other training media

Virtual reality in theatre education and design practice - new developments and applications

The global use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has already established new approaches to theatre education and research, shifting traditional methods of knowledge delivery towards a more visually enhanced experience, which is especially important for teaching scenography. In this paper, I examine the role of multimedia within the field of theatre studies, with particular focus on the theory and practice of theatre design and education. I discuss various IT applications that have transformed the way we experience, learn and co-create our cultural heritage. I explore a suite of rapidly developing communication and computer-visualization techniques that enable reciprocal exchange between students, theatre performances and artefacts. Eventually, I analyse novel technology-mediated teaching techniques that attempt to provide a new media platform for visually enhanced information transfer. My findings indicate that the recent developments in the personalization of knowledge delivery, and also in student-centred study and e-learning, necessitate the transformation of the learners from passive consumers of digital products to active and creative participants in the learning experience

Applications of Virtual Reality

Information Technology is growing rapidly. With the birth of high-resolution graphics, high-speed computing and user interaction devices Virtual Reality has emerged as a major new technology in the mid 90es, last century. Virtual Reality technology is currently used in a broad range of applications. The best known are games, movies, simulations, therapy. From a manufacturing standpoint, there are some attractive applications including training, education, collaborative work and learning. This book provides an up-to-date discussion of the current research in Virtual Reality and its applications. It describes the current Virtual Reality state-of-the-art and points out many areas where there is still work to be done. We have chosen certain areas to cover in this book, which we believe will have potential significant impact on Virtual Reality and its applications. This book provides a definitive resource for wide variety of people including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students

Effects of Desktop Virtual Reality on Learner Performance and Confidence in Environment Mastery: Opening a Line of Inquiry

Virtual reality (VR) has demonstrated effectiveness as an instructional technology in many technical fields. However, VR research has generally lacked a sound theory base to provide explanatory or predictive strength. Further, research into the effectiveness of new desktop technologies that place VR within the reach of schools and teachers is currently embryonic. The study reported here is a pilot and is highly exploratory. It is a first step in developing a theory-based line of inquiry into desktop VR as an instructional technology with potential for Career and Technical Education. Grounded in several theory and research strands, this study compared the effects of presenting a complex scene via desktop VR and a set of still photographic images. The two treatments were given to groups drawn from the general population with equal representation by both genders and two age groups. Two performance measures and a confidence measure were analyzed using 2-way ANOVAs. Statistically significant main effects for treatment were found for all three measures, all in favor of the VR treatment. These findings were consistent with predictions based on the study’s theory base. Several main effects for age and gender, and trends for interactions of age and gender with treatment, were also identified that may provide impetus for further research

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is a natural development from virtual reality (VR), which was developed several decades earlier. AR complements VR in many ways. Due to the advantages of the user being able to see both the real and virtual objects simultaneously, AR is far more intuitive, but it's not completely detached from human factors and other restrictions. AR doesn't consume as much time and effort in the applications because it's not required to construct the entire virtual scene and the environment. In this book, several new and emerging application areas of AR are presented and divided into three sections. The first section contains applications in outdoor and mobile AR, such as construction, restoration, security and surveillance. The second section deals with AR in medical, biological, and human bodies. The third and final section contains a number of new and useful applications in daily living and learning