VRONSITE Hardware Prototype

Motivation

Over the past decade, VR-based training in disaster preparedness has been increasingly recognized as an important adjunct to traditional modalities of real-life drills. Multiple studies have highlighted VR applications in disaster training. This increased practice realism enables responders to gauge their individual and/or team’s ability to execute tasks and decision-making under more closely representative conditions. In essence, the immersive environment incorporated in VR-based training and exercise applications not only offers the realism that classroom-based instructive teaching lacks, but also may reduce the time and cost burden that real-life drills and tabletop exercises can place on participating organizations. Using VR technology, training can be provided in a controlled setting that mimic real-life situations as closely as possible and that can be repeated unlimited times. Repetition time as well as the feeling of presence that is provided in VR both have positive effects on task performance, enabling the learning situation to be experienced as a real context. This in turn promotes experiential learning as well as the development of operational and formal thinking by facilitating the exploration of different possibilities.

We have developed a fully immersive virtual training environment to train commanders of a first responder squads upon arrival at the emergency site. The full command-do-act-check cycle can be trained within a number of developed training scenarios that are tailored to the needs of fire fighters and paramedics. The entire immserive VR setup is fully untethered and features a stereoscopic Head Mounted Display (Samsung Gear VR), different means for navigation (joystick, omni-directional treadmill) and 3D virtual object interaction. As core processing unit, a Samsung Galaxy S6 is used for 3D rendering and processing of all user input data, which is wirelessly transmitted from Stratus XL Gamepad or the Cyberith Virtualizer. .