Social Skills Training Tool in Virtual Reality, Intended for Managers and Sales Representatives

International audienceSocial skills training courses for managers and sales representatives are mainly realized today through role-playing sessions, which show several limits: realism, contextualization, evaluation objectivity. This paper describes a prototype of a Virtual Reality tool intended to answer these issues. This tool allows living role-playing sessions with virtual characters. We present the results of the first user tests we carried out. Users felt spatially present, involved, and socially present. Results also underline areas of improvement, such as non-verbal behaviors, scenario content and environment realism

Motion Rail: A Virtual Reality Level Crossing Training Application

This paper presents the development and usability testing of a Virtual Reality (VR) based system named 'Motion Rail' for training children on railway crossing safety. The children are to use a VR head mounted device and a controller to navigate the VR environment to perform a level crossing task and they will receive instant feedback on pass or failure on a display in the VR environment. Five participants consisting of two male and three females were considered for the usability test. The outcomes of the test was promising, as the children were very engaging and will like to adopt this training approach in future safety training

Immersive bicycle game for health virtual tour of UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world. More than 10 million people worldwide The goal of this research is to promote UIN Maliki Malang using immersive tools bicycle for human health. The system developed using combination of bicycle and computer with various sensors on the wheels, steering and brakes. The device consists of a mountain bike in front of the monitor are useful to display virtual Tour. Children’s reactions to the virtual peer indicate that their virtual peer framework is a promising platform for future behavioral studies of peer influences on children’s bicycle riding behavior. The system results shows immersive bicycle road in UIN Maliki Malang area. This system is useful for refreshing and relaxing human body

Comparing Photorealistic and Animated Embodied Conversational Agents in Serious Games: An Empirical Study on User Experience

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are paradigms of conversational user interfaces in the form of embodied characters. While ECAs offer various manipulable features, this paper focuses on a study conducted to explore two distinct levels of presentation realism. The two agent versions are photorealistic and animated. The study aims to provide insights and design suggestions for speech-enabled ECAs within serious game environments. A within-subjects, two-by-two factorial design was employed for this research with a cohort of 36 participants balanced for gender. The results showed that both the photorealistic and the animated versions were perceived as highly usable, with overall mean scores of 5.76 and 5.71, respectively. However, 69.4 per cent of the participants stated they preferred the photorealistic version, 25 per cent stated they preferred the animated version and 5.6 per cent had no stated preference. The photorealistic agents were perceived as more realistic and human-like, while the animated characters made the task feel more like a game. Even though the agents' realism had no significant effect on usability, it positively influenced participants' perceptions of the agent. This research aims to lay the groundwork for future studies on ECA realism's impact in serious games across diverse contexts.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures, preprint to be published in HCI INTERNATIONAL 2023 25TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION proceeding

The impact of social context on learning and cognitive demands for interactive virtual human simulations

Interactive virtual human (IVH) simulations offer a novel method for training skills involving person-to-person interactions. This article examines the effectiveness of an IVH simulation for teaching medical students to assess rare cranial nerve abnormalities in both individual and small-group learning contexts. Individual (n = 26) and small-group (n = 30) interaction with the IVH system was manipulated to examine the influence on learning, learner engagement, perceived cognitive demands of the learning task, and instructional efficiency. Results suggested the IVH activity was an equally effective and engaging instructional tool in both learning structures, despite learners in the group learning contexts having to share hands-on access to the simulation interface. Participants in both conditions demonstrated a significant increase in declarative knowledge post-training. Operation of the IVH simulation technology imposed moderate cognitive demand but did not exceed the demands of the task content or appear to impede learning

Training soldiers to calibration procedures in Virtual Reality, the FELIN IR sight use case

National audienceThe infantrymen of the French army are equipped today with a combat system called FELIN, which includes an infrared sighting device: the IR sight. One of the first manipulations learnt by the soldier is the IR sight calibration. Currently, calibration training is a two-step procedure. The first step consists in practicing on a 2D WIMP software, and virtually practicing until making no mistakes. Then, if the soldier succeeds without mistakes, he can apply his knowledge in real situation on the shooting range. In this paper, we present a learning method that includes a prototype in Virtual Reality for training on the FELIN IR sight calibration procedure. We experimented it on real infantrymen learners in an infantry school. Results showed interesting added value of Virtual Reality in this specific use case. It improved the learners' motivation, learning efficiency and helped to identify specific mistake types not detected by the traditional learning software

The Need for Multi-Aspectual Representation of Narratives in Modelling their Creative Process

Existing approaches to narrative construction tend to apply basic engineering principles of system design which rely on identifying the most relevant feature of the domain for the problem at hand, and postulating an initial representation of the problem space organised around such a principal feature. Some features that have been favoured in the past include: causality, linear discourse, underlying structure, and character behavior. The present paper defends the need for simultaneous consideration of as many as possible of these aspects when attempting to model the process of creating narratives, together with some mechanism for distributing the weight of the decision processes across them. Humans faced with narrative construction may shift from views based on characters to views based on structure, then consider causality, and later also take into account the shape of discourse. This behavior can be related to the process of representational re-description of constraints as described in existing literature on cognitive models of the writing task. The paper discusses how existing computational models of narrative construction address this phenomenon, and argues for a computational model of narrative explicitly based on multiple aspects

Ad-hoc study on soldiers calibration procedure in Virtual Reality

International audienceFrench Army infantrymen's are equipped today with a combat system called FELIN, which includes an infrared sighting device: the IR sight. One of the first manipulations learned by the soldier is the IR sight calibration. Currently, calibration training is a two-step process. The first step consists of practicing on a 2D WIMP software until making no mistakes. Then, the soldiers can apply his knowledge in the real situation on the shooting range. In this paper, we present an ad-hoc study of a learning method including a prototype in Virtual Reality for training on the FELIN IR sight calibration procedure. It has been experimented on real infantrymen learners in an infantry school. Results showed an attractive added value of Virtual Reality in this specific use case. It improved the learners' intrinsic motivation to repeat the training task as well as the learning efficiency. It also helped the training team to identify specific mistake types not detected by the traditional learning software