“Woodlands” - a Virtual Reality Serious Game Supporting Learning of Practical Road Safety Skills.

In developed societies road safety skills are taught early and often practiced under the supervision of a parent, providing children with a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. At some point children will attempt to cross a road unsupervised, at that point in time their safety depends on the effectiveness of their road safety education. To date, various attempts to supplement road safety education with technology were made. Most common approach focus on addressing declarative knowledge, by delivering road safety theory in an engaging fashion. Apart from expanding on text based resources to include instructional videos and animations, some stakeholders (e.g.: Irish Road Safety Authority) attempt to take advantage of game-based learning [1]. However, despite the high capacity for interaction being common in Virtual Environments, available game-based solutions to road safety education are currently limited to delivering and assessing declarative knowledge

Improving learning experience by employing DASH-based mulsemedia delivery

This paper describes the experimental deployment of a DASH-based Multi-Sensory Media Delivery System (DASHMS) to support multi-sensorial media-enhanced learning. Multi-sensorial media (mulsemedia) combines multimedia components (video and audio) and emerging technologies targeting other human senses (e.g. touch haptics, smell and taste). This paper studies learning experience with olfaction and haptic-based mulsemedia when employing DASHMS in a real-life subjective experiment with 40 participants. The tests performed evaluate the user-perceived quality of experience (QoE) and the effects of mulsemedia on user learning

Towards a Conceptual Framework for the Development of Immersive Experiences to Negotiate Meaning and Identify in Irish Language Learning

The onset of virtual reality systems allows for new immersive content which provides users with a sense of presence in their virtual environment. This paper provides the conceptual framework for a larger study examining how designed virtual reality experiences can be utilised to transform Irish language meaning making and a user\u27s personal Irish language identity

The Interplay Between Presence and Learning

The highly immersive Virtual reality (VR) headset is gaining popularity in multiple application domains. In the context of learning, it has been proposed to be beneficial by increasing presence and attention in noisy and distracting environments, both factors that are considered important for learning. Despite intensified research efforts in recent years, empirical knowledge of experimental research addressing the link between presence and learning in specific environmental contexts is still rather scarce. In this study following an experimental mixed-method approach, the link between presence and memorization as a particular form of learning is addressed by comparing memorization with a highly immersive VR headset to a less immersive system (desktop screen) in noisy and calm learning environments. Using a 2 (learning location) x 2 (learning device) between-subjects design, 63 participants interacted with one of the two devices in either of the two environments. As expected, VR headset users reported higher presence levels. While participants subjectively evaluated the VR headset as a better device for learning, the memorization test scores were higher for desktop screen users in both calm and noisy environments. Learning location did not show significant effects. Attention distraction and context-dependent learning are discussed with regard to the unexpected results, while implications for practice and future research are discussed

Biomove: Biometric user identification from human kinesiological movements for virtual reality systems

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Virtual reality (VR) has advanced rapidly and is used for many entertainment and business purposes. The need for secure, transparent and non-intrusive identification mechanisms is important to facilitate users’ safe participation and secure experience. People are kinesiologically unique, having individual behavioral and movement characteristics, which can be leveraged and used in security sensitive VR applications to compensate for users’ inability to detect potential observational attackers in the physical world. Additionally, such method of identification using a user’s kinesiological data is valuable in common scenarios where multiple users simultaneously participate in a VR environment. In this paper, we present a user study (n = 15) where our participants performed a series of controlled tasks that require physical movements (such as grabbing, rotating and dropping) that could be decomposed into unique kinesiological patterns while we monitored and captured their hand, head and eye gaze data within the VR environment. We present an analysis of the data and show that these data can be used as a biometric discriminant of high confidence using machine learning classification methods such as kNN or SVM, thereby adding a layer of security in terms of identification or dynamically adapting the VR environment to the users’ preferences. We also performed a whitebox penetration testing with 12 attackers, some of whom were physically similar to the participants. We could obtain an average identification confidence value of 0.98 from the actual participants’ test data after the initial study and also a trained model classification accuracy of 98.6%. Penetration testing indicated all attackers resulted in confidence values of less than 50% (\u3c50%), although physically similar attackers had higher confidence values. These findings can help the design and development of secure VR systems

Collaborative Accessible Gameplay with One-Switch Interfaces

Gaming, both traditional and electronic, is a key activity for children of all ages, enabling them to learn skills, socialize with friends and family, and entertain themselves. Unfortunately, children with disabilities encounter several accessibility barriers that prevent them to participate in mainstream games, unless some adaptations are made to the interfaces. This paper tackles the problem of enabling children with severe motor disabilities to participate in multiplayer games with their peers, thus providing opportunities for socialization and fun inside families or classrooms. We present a collaborative two-player puzzle game, based on several levels of labyrinths that need to be solved by moving the two players' characters. The characteristics of the game (such as the absence of time constraints, and the need of the players to coordinate their moves) were defined in a study group involving computer scientists, psychologists and speech therapists. The game was designed and implemented to be controllable with a single-switch interface, thanks to the GNomon interaction method. A preliminary evaluation has been conducted with 5 couples of able players (mostly children) who enjoyed the game and gave us useful insights

Biomove: Biometric user identification from human kinesiological movements for virtual reality systems

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Virtual reality (VR) has advanced rapidly and is used for many entertainment and business purposes. The need for secure, transparent and non-intrusive identification mechanisms is important to facilitate users’ safe participation and secure experience. People are kinesiologically unique, having individual behavioral and movement characteristics, which can be leveraged and used in security sensitive VR applications to compensate for users’ inability to detect potential observational attackers in the physical world. Additionally, such method of identification using a user’s kinesiological data is valuable in common scenarios where multiple users simultaneously participate in a VR environment. In this paper, we present a user study (n = 15) where our participants performed a series of controlled tasks that require physical movements (such as grabbing, rotating and dropping) that could be decomposed into unique kinesiological patterns while we monitored and captured their hand, head and eye gaze data within the VR environment. We present an analysis of the data and show that these data can be used as a biometric discriminant of high confidence using machine learning classification methods such as kNN or SVM, thereby adding a layer of security in terms of identification or dynamically adapting the VR environment to the users’ preferences. We also performed a whitebox penetration testing with 12 attackers, some of whom were physically similar to the participants. We could obtain an average identification confidence value of 0.98 from the actual participants’ test data after the initial study and also a trained model classification accuracy of 98.6%. Penetration testing indicated all attackers resulted in confidence values of less than 50% (\u3c50%), although physically similar attackers had higher confidence values. These findings can help the design and development of secure VR systems

Wearable Human Computer Interface for control within immersive VAMR gaming environments using data glove and hand gestures

The continuous advances in the state-of-the-art in the Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality (V AMR) technology are important in many application spaces, including gaming, entertainment, and media technologies. V AMR is part of the broader Human-Computer Interface (HCI) area focused on providing an unprecedentedly immersive way of interacting with computers. These new ways of interacting with computers can leverage the emerging user input devices. In this paper, we present a demonstrator system that shows how our wearable Virtual Reality (VR) Glove can be used with an off-the-shelf head-mounted VR device, the RealWear HMT-1™. We show how the smart data capture glove can be used as an effective input device to the HMT-1™ to control various devices, such as virtual controls, simply using hand gesture recognition algorithms. We describe our fully functional proof-of-concept prototype, along with the complete system architecture and its ability to scale by incorporating other devices

HAVE Experience: an investigation into VR empathy for panic disorder

This paper presents a Virtual Reality (VR) system that was developed to increase empathy and understanding for panic disorder. The system is designed to give users a heightened awareness of the experience of those symptoms and a deeper, experiential understanding and empathy towards sufferers of panic attacks. VR provides an immersive and controllable experimental environment and serves as a safe dynamic test bed suitable for the study of this topic. The research uses the immersive auditory and visual modalities of VR as contributing factors for a positive empathetic experience, which may be used by medical professionals or those seeking a greater understanding of panic attack symptoms through first hand experience. The main goal is to assess whether the system is capable of imparting users with an enhanced level of understanding of panic attack symptoms leading to a greater sense of empathy. The paper describes the design and implementation of the `HAVE Experience', and an initial experiment conducted with 26 subjects in a controlled environment. Participants were situated in a virtual elevator, where they were exposed to increasing levels of panic disorder symptoms in a controlled manner. The findings indicate that VR is a good medium for conveying empathetic experiences. Moreover the study revealed that an overwhelming majority of participants felt an increased level of empathy and understanding for panic attack sufferers