Serious games for the human behaviour analysis in emergency evacuation scenarios

This paper describes an experiment designed to elicit human behaviour when facing the urgent need of exiting an unknown building. This work is part of a larger effort to devise the methodological approach underlying the implementation of simulation of pedestrians and elicitation of their emergent dynamics, an experimental framework coined SPEED. To validate our experimental setup, a group of 16 experts on fire safety, emergency planning and building evacuation were consulted. The experts were solicited to answer a questionnaire, rating their gaming experiences and validating the questions in the form to be presented to subjects. Their comments were valuable inputs used in the development of the experiment described in this paper. A sample of 62 subjects was then used to test our approach, which consists in having the subjects answering a questionnaire and later on playing a Serious Game resorting to the Unity3D game engine. Some specific scenarios were carefully designed and presented to subjects, both in the questionnaire and in the game environment to maintain consistency of answers. Preliminary results are promising, showing that the challenge made players think about the various situations that might happen when facing an emergency. They are also implied to reason on their stream of decisions, such as which direction to take considering the environment and some adverse situations, such as smoke, fire and people running on the opposite direction of the emergency signage.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Serious Games in Science Education. A Systematic Literature Review

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User experience of interactive technologies for people with dementia: comparative observational study

Background: Serious games (SGs) are used as complementary approaches to stimulate patients with dementia. However, many of the SGs use out-of-the-shelf technologies that may not always be suitable for such populations, as they can lead to negative behaviors, such as anxiety, fatigue, and even cybersickness. Objective: This study aims to evaluate how patients with dementia interact and accept 5 out-of-the-shelf technologies while completing 10 virtual reality tasks. Methods: A total of 12 participants diagnosed with dementia (mean age 75.08 [SD 8.07] years, mean Mini-Mental State Examination score 17.33 [SD 5.79], and mean schooling 5.55 [SD 3.30]) at a health care center in Portugal were invited to participate in this study. A within-subject experimental design was used to allow all participants to interact with all technologies, such as HTC VIVE, head-mounted display (HMD), tablet, mouse, augmented reality (AR), leap motion (LM), and a combination of HMD with LM. Participants’ performance was quantified through behavioral and verbal responses, which were captured through video recordings and written notes. Results: The findings of this study revealed that the user experience using technology was dependent on the patient profile; the patients had a better user experience when they use technologies with direct interaction configuration as opposed to indirect interaction configuration in terms of assistance required (P=.01) and comprehension (P=.01); the participants did not trigger any emotional responses when using any of the technologies; the participants’performance was task-dependent; the most cost-effective technology was the mouse, whereas the least cost-effective was AR; and all the technologies, except for one (HMD with LM), were not exposed to external hazards. Conclusions: Most participants were able to perform tasks using out-of-the-shelf technologies. However, there is no perfect technology, as they are not explicitly designed to address the needs and skills of people with dementia. Here, we propose a set of guidelines that aim to help health professionals and engineers maximize user experience when using such technologies for the population with dementia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An empirical platform for behavioural modelling using serious games

A cada dia que passa, os jogos sérios tornam-se mais relevantes elevados a sério pelas instituiçõesresponsáveis. Apesar de a sociedade em geral não estar totalmente familiar com o conceito, existemmuitos benefícios que podem ser alcançados com o uso destes jogos. Segundo [OPO+15],estas aplicações têm uma vasta gama de domínios, naturalmente incluindo simulação social, ondea recolha de dados das atitudes dos jogadores podem ser posteriormente usados em análise estatística,e reconhecimento de padrões comportamentais. Isto faz destas aplicações uma ferramentaimportante para intervenção social e educacional. Mas como podemos usar este conceito com eliciaçãocomportamental? Como é possivel construir um jogo, com mecânicas que permitam pontosde decisão e usar isto para colectar dados e simular situações de emergência?Em [RAR+12], é referido que os vídeo jogos apresentam algumas características que os tornamúteis como um recurso. À medida que emoções tais como prazer e satisfação são sentidos,é mais provável que os utilizadores permaneçam motivados enquanto realizam as suas tarefas.Para além disso, é muito mais fácil para o ser humano, assimilar mecânicas e técnicas em vez deconhecimento teórico.O principal objectivo desta dissertação de mestrado é contruir uma plataforma de jogos parapesquisa de desenvolvimento na área de modelação de comportamento. A recolha dos dadosnecessários pode ser feita através dos jogos e das suas mecânicas, e posteriormente melhorar ojogo para o tornar mais realista e imersivo. Sendo uma simulação de situações de emergência, orealismo ajuda na eliciação, assimilação e persuasão pretendidas no projecto.A solução deve ser adaptativa às necessidades do sujeito. Devem haver mecânicas e cenáriosalternativos para escolher. Desta forma, não só o jogo consegue atingir um maior número depessoas e situações, mas também, representar mais fielmente as suas necessidades.Each day serious games are becoming more relevant and taken seriously by responsible institutions.Although the overall society is still not truly familiar with this concept, there are greatbenefits that can be achieved with this games. As said in [OPO+15], applications have a widerange of domains, naturally including social simulation, where data collection of player attitudescan be later used for statistical analysis, and behavioral pattern recognition. This makes them animportant tool to both educational and social intervention. But how can we use this concept withbehavior elicitation? How can we make a game, with mechanics that allow decision points anduse this to both collect data and simulate emergency situations?In [RAR+12], we learn that Video games present some characteristics that make them helpfulas a resource. As sentiments like enjoyment and fulfillment are felt, users are more likely tostay motivated while doing their tasks. Also it is much easier for the human being to assimilatemechanics or techniques rather than theoretic knowledge.The main goal of this master thesis is to make a game platform for research and developmentin the field of behavior modeling. The data collection needed can be done using the game and itsmechanics, and then improve the game to make it more realistic and immersive. Being a simulationof emergency situations the realism helps the elicitation, assimilation and persuasion wanted forthe project.The solution must be adaptive to the need of the subject. There must be alternative scenariosand mechanics to chose from. This way, not only the game can reach more kinds of people andsituations, but also, represent more accurately their required need

Multimodal virtual environments: an opportunity to improve fire safety training?

Fires and fire-related fatalities remain a tragic and frequent occurrence. Evidence has shown that humans adopt sub-optimal behaviours during fire incidents and, therefore, training is one possible means to improve occupant survival rates. We present the potential benefits of using Virtual Environment Training (VET) for fire evacuation. These include experiential and active learning, the ability to interact with contexts which would be dangerous to experience in real life, the ability to customise training and scenarios to the learner, and analytics on learner performance. While several studies have investigated fire safety in VET, generally with positive outcomes, challenges related to cybersickness, interaction and content creation remain. Moreover, issues such as lack of behavioural realism have been attributed to the lack realistic sensory feedback. We argue for multimodal (visual, audio, olfactory, heat) virtual fire safety training to address limitations with existing simulators, and ultimately improve the outcomes of fire incidents. © 2020, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health

Compreender e melhorar cooperação e filosofias morais através de um jogo sério

Os videojogos são uma fonte de entretenimento muito comum na sociedade atual. A sua indústria encontra-se em constante crescimento devido à evolução tecnológica que acompanha os nossos tempos. O potencial que representa, devido às diferentes formas de se poder criar e apresentar conteúdo, faz com que os videojogos deixem de ser meramente uma fonte de entretenimento, passando a poder ser utilizados como uma ferramenta não só de ensino, como de sensibilização. Através desta dissertação, proponho uma experiência social, cuja meta é entender a ideologia filosófica predominante de um determinado indivíduo, educá-los sobre a sua filosofia moral e da importância da cooperação, tudo utilizando um jogo sério que obtém dados através das ações do jogador. Após realizada a experiência, determinou-se que o indivíduo em questão obteve conhecimento e que se lhe fosse dada a hipótese, faria algumas mudanças nas suas decisões dentro do jogo. Foi possível comprovar evidências de que a exposição a ferramentas tais como jogos sérios, podem alterar a perceção social, filosófica, moral e cooperativa de um indivíduo.Videogames are a very common source of entertainment nowadays. Their industry is found to be in constant growth due to the technological expansion our times present. The potential it represents, mostly due to the different ways to create and present content, makes it so that videogames are no longer solely a source of entertainment, becoming also a tool to transmit not only knowledge, but social awareness as well. Through this dissertation, I propose a social experiment, which goal is to understand the predominant philosophical idealogy tied to an individual, educate them about their moral philosophy and the importance of cooperation, all by using a Serious Game that obtains data from the player through their actions. After the social experimentation, it was determined that the subject gained knowledge and would prompted change some of the decisions done within the game. It was possible to obtain evidence that exposure to such a tool as a Serious Game, can alter Social, Philosophical and Moral perception in a person

Uma abordagem ontológica para modelação de informação espaciotemporal com aplicações em transportes

O trabalho realizado na dissertação é desenvolvido no contexto da análise de dados espaciotemporais, mais propriamente dados de redes rodoviárias. Nos dias de hoje existe uma grande quantidade de dados. Estes estão constantemente a ser gerados por todos ou quase todos os dispositivos eletrónicos que nos rodeiam. O aproveitamento destes dados tem cada vez mais atraído a atenção dos investigadores e de empresas a investigar e a investir nesse sentido. Dados atualmente também são gerados pelos sensores instalados nas estradas. Estes sensores podem ser tanto fixos, como é o caso das espiras magnéticas ou câmaras de videovigilância, como também podem ser móveis, que é o caso dos floating cars. Todos estes sensores geram dados e a sua leitura, compreensão e uso são muito importantes para a realização de uma boa análise acerca de tráfego rodoviário. Para que seja possível analisar dados provenientes de variadas fontes, ou neste caso provenientes de variados sensores, é necessário efetuar junção de dados ou até das próprias fontes de dados. Isso é uma tarefa complexa e tediosa se for feita com base em técnicas clássicas como agregação de esquemas relacionais ou até junção manual dos dados. É necessário arranjar técnicas que permitam efetuar essa tarefa de uma maneira fácil e de preferência automática. Felizmente métodos com base em ontologias surgiram para tratar este tipo de problemas. Com estes métodos é possível juntar várias fontes de dados com a manutenção do significado dos dados e sem a necessidade de fazer tudo manualmente. Com base nesta metodologia, pretende-se neste trabalho abordar ontologicamente os dados e sensores rodoviários, efetuando a sua junção. É requerido aplicar o resultado dessa junção num sistema com arquitetura orientada a serviços, de maneira a que clientes possam facilmente se conectar ao sistema através de serviço disponibilizados por este. A povoação do modelo ontológico será feito inicialmente com logs GPS, dados de espiras magnéticas (cedidos pela Estradas de Portugal e inicialmente somente da VCI) e OpenStreetMaps. Também serão utilizados dados provenientes de simuladores para o preenchimento de eventuais lacunas que possam existir nos dados reais. Posteriormente é requerido integrar o simulador SUMO, pretendendo-se alargar o suporte a outros. Como resultado final é esperada a elaboração de um repositório geográfico científico para análise de sistemas de transportes a ser usado por variados utilizadores, com diferentes interesses ou objetivos relativamente aos dados disponibilizados.This dissertation work is developed in the context the spatiotemporal data analysis, specifically transportation data. Nowadays there is a great amount of available data. This is because almost every electronic device that is around us generates data. Usage of this resource attracts researchers and companies to research and invest on ways to do so. Even roads are generating data through sensors. These sensors can be fixed, which is the case of inductive loops and video surveillance cameras, as well as mobile, such as the case of floating cars. Data readability, comprehension and usage are of vital importance for a proper traffic analysis. To be possible to analyse data from different data sources, or sensors in this specific case, it is necessary to integrate this data. Bearing this in mind, it is also known that this task is difficult if performed manually. So it is necessary to research new techniques which would allow us to simplify this task, and preferentially automate it. Fortunately there are methods based on ontologies which help tackling those problems. They allow us to integrate many data sources and maintain the original meaning and form of such data. Based on this methodology sensors and data will be approached on an ontology basis, allowing for their integration in one single representation. After that, such an integrated system will be shared through a service-oriented architecture. This will allow clients to easily access the data present in the system. GPS logs, OpenStreetMaps and inductive loop data will be used to populate this ontological model. Afterwards data from simulators such as SUMO will also be used to fill in possible gaps that might not be covered by real data. One expected result from this dissertation is that a scientific geographic repository can devised and implemented to be used for the transportation analysis by many clients with different needs and interests