More Like this

1. Immersive Virtual Reality Training Module for Active Shooter Events

   https://doi.org/10.2352/EI.2022.34.12.ERVR-299  

   Sharad Sharma, Sri Teja (January 2022, Proceedings of the IS&T International Symposium on Electronic Imaging (EI 2022), in the Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality)

   Active shooter events are not emergencies that can be reasonably anticipated. However, these events do occur more than we think, and there is a critical need for an effective emergency preparedness plan that can increase the likelihood of saving lives and reducing casualties in the event of an active shooting incident. There has been a major concern about the lack of tools available to allow for modeling and simulation of human behavior during emergency response training. Over the past few decades, virtual reality-based training for emergency response and decision making has been recognized as a novel alternative for disaster preparedness. This paper presents an immersive virtual reality (VR) training module for active shooter events for a building emergency response. There are two immersive active shooter modules developed: occupant’s module and Security personnel module. We have developed an immersive virtual reality training module for active shooter events using an Oculus for the course of action, visualization, and situational awareness for active shooter events. The immersive environment is implemented in Unity 3D where the user has an option to enter the environment as security personnel or as an occupant in the building. The immersive VR training module offers a unique platform for emergency response and decision making training. The platform allows for collecting data on different what-if scenarios in response to active shooter events that impact the actions of security personnel and occupants in a building. The data collected can be used to educate security personnel on how to reduce response times. Moreover, security personnel can be trained to respond to a variety of emergencies safely and securely without ever being exposed to real-world dangers. 

   more » « less
2. Improving Emergency Response Training and Decision Making Using a Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment for Building Evacuation

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59990-4_17  

   Sharma, Sharad (October 2020, Proceedings of 22nd HCI International Conference, HCII 2020, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 19–24, 2020)

   null; null; null (Ed.)

   Emergency response training is needed to remember and implement emergency operation plans (EOP) and procedures over long periods until an emergency occurs. There is also a need to develop an effective mechanism of teamwork under emergency conditions such as bomb blasts and active shooter events inside a building. One way to address these needs is to create a collaborative training module to study these emergencies and perform virtual evacuation drills. This paper presents a collaborative virtual reality (VR) environment for performing emergency response training for fire and smoke as well as for active shooter training scenarios. The collaborative environment is implemented in Unity 3D and is based on run, hide, and fight mode of emergency response. Our proposed collaborative virtual environment (CVE) is set up on the cloud and the participants can enter the VR environment as a policeman or as a civilian. We have used game creation as a metaphor for developing a CVE platform for conducting training exercises for different what-if scenarios in a safe and cost-effective manner. The novelty of our work lies in modeling behaviors of two kinds of agents in the environment: user-controlled agents and computer-controlled agents. The computer controlled agents are defined with preexisting rules of behaviors whereas the user controlled agents are autonomous agents that provide controls to the user to navigate in the CVE at their own pace. Our contribution lies in our approach to combine these two approaches of behavior to perform emergency response training for building evacuation. 

   more » « less
3. Multi-agent Crowd Simulation in an Active Shooter Environment

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06015-1_8  

   Sharma, S. (May 2022, Lecture notes in computer science)

   Chen, J.Y.C. (Ed.)

   In recent years there has been a sharp increase in active shooter events, but there has been no introduction of new technology or tactics capable of increasing preparedness and training for active shooter events. This has raised a major concern about the lack of tools that would allow robust predictions of realistic human movements and the lack of understanding about the interaction in designated simulation environments. It is impractical to carry out live experiments where thousands of people are evacuated from buildings designed for every possible emergency condition. There has been progress in understanding human movement, human motion synthesis, crowd dynamics, indoor environments, and their relationships with active shooter events, but challenges remain. This paper presents a virtual reality (VR) experimental setup for conducting virtual evacuation drills in response to extreme events and demonstrates the behavior of agents during an active shooter environment. The behavior of agents is implemented using behavior trees in the Unity gaming engine. The VR experimental setup can simulate human behavior during an active shooter event in a campus setting. A presence questionnaire (PQ) was used in the user study to evaluate the effectiveness and engagement of our active shooter environment. The results show that majority of users agreed that the sense of presence was increased when using the emergency response training environment for a building evacuation environment. 

   more » « less
4. Collaborative Virtual Assembly Environment for Product Design

   https://doi.org/10.1109/CSCI49370.2019.00114  

   Sharma, Sharad; Bodempudi, Sri-Teja; Arrolla, Manik; Upadhyay, Amit (December 2019, 2019 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI))

   Collaborative virtual assembly environment is a vital computer-aided design tool in product design and can be used as a learning and training tool. It helps in supporting complex product design by enabling designers to collaborate and communicate with other designers involved in the product design. This paper proposes a collaborative virtual assembly environment built in two phases for the immersive and non-immersive environments. Phase one was developed in Unity 3D using Virtual Reality Toolkit (VRTK) and Steam VR. Whereas, phase two was built using Vizard and Vizible. This work aims to allow scientists and engineers to discuss the concept design in a real-time VR environment so that they can interact with the objects and review their work before it is deployed. This paper proposes the system architecture and describes the design and implementation of a collaborative virtual assembly environment. The outcome of this work is to be able to resolve communication and interaction problems that arise during the concept-design phase. 

   more » « less
5. Impact of Virtual Reality on Decision-Making and Risk Assessment During Simulated Residential Fire Scenarios

   https://doi.org/10.3390/fire7120427  

   Russell, Micah D; Bonny, Justin W; Reed, Randal (December 2024, Fire)

   Recent research has used virtual environments (VEs), as presented via virtual reality (VR) headsets, to study human behavior in hypothetical fire scenarios. One goal of using VEs in fire scenarios is to elicit patterns of behavior which more closely align to how individuals would react to real fire emergency situations. The present study investigated whether elicited behaviors and perceived risk varied during fire scenarios presented as VEs via two viewing conditions. These included a VR condition, where the VE was rendered as 360-degree videos presented in a VR headset, and a screen condition, where VEs were rendered as fixed-view videos via a computer monitor screen. We predicted that the selection of actions during the scenario would vary between conditions, that participants would rate fires as more dangerous if they developed more quickly and when smoke was rendered as thicker, and that participants would report greater levels of immersion in the VR condition. A total of 159 participants completed a decision-making task where they viewed videos of an incipient fire in a residential building and judged what action to take. Initial action responses to the fire scenarios varied between both viewing and smoke conditions, with those assigned to the thicker smoke and screen conditions being more likely to take protective action. Risk ratings also varied by smoke condition, with evidence of higher perceived risk for thicker smoke. Several factors of self-reported immersion (namely ‘interest’, ‘emotional attachment’, ‘focus of attention’, and ‘flow’) were associated with risk ratings, with perceived presence associated with initial actions. The present study provides evidence that enhancing immersion and perceived risk in a VE contributes to a different pattern of behaviors during simulated fire decision-making tasks. While our investigation only addressed the ideas of presence in an environment, future research should investigate the relative contribution of interactivity and consequences within the environment to further identify how behaviors during simulated fire scenarios are affected by each of these factors. 

   more » « less