CAREER: Implementing and Assessing Inexpensive, Effective Methods of Exploring Virtual Environments

虚拟环境(VE)是计算机生成的三维世界的描述，人类可以在其中导航探索。VES已被证明在广泛的应用和学科中是有效的，例如培训矿工的安全程序，教育医生和护士，为创伤后应激障碍提供治疗，以及治疗自闭症儿童。尽管大量的研究表明它们是有用的，然而，VE并没有被广泛使用。这在很大程度上是因为目前的VE系统仍然昂贵且操作复杂。然而，随着相对低成本的消费级传感器和头盔显示器(HMD)在保真度和准确性方面的最近改进，现在创建高保真但低成本的沉浸式虚拟现实系统的可能性越来越大。现在应该可以使VE对普通公众有用，达到以前无法达到的程度。然而，仍然存在重大挑战，例如如何给人一种在VE中四处移动和导航的手段，特别是当人需要在所有可能的方向上移动时，包括上下移动，例如在探索分子或太阳系的虚拟模型时。另一个挑战是更好地理解虚拟环境作为一般学习环境的能力和局限性。这个项目将使创建高保真和经济高效的虚拟环境系统变得更加可行，这将使教育工作者、研究人员、多个领域的工作者和普通公众更容易使用虚拟环境来改善知识和生活。该项目将使VES的应用变得更加实用，例如在建筑物建成前评估其疏散计划，为创伤后应激障碍提供治疗，或向儿童传授分子生物学或行星现象等主题。已经证明，如果体验非常接近真实世界的情况，在虚拟环境中获得的技能或知识就会转移到现实世界中；这个项目创建了一个通用的廉价的虚拟环境，其中感知到的体验尽可能接近真实世界的体验，但使用了具有成本效益的计算机系统。这个项目是在一所小型文科本科学院进行的，将为本科生参与这项研究提供许多机会。这项建议中概述的研究使本科生和研究人员都能够为计算机科学、人机交互、虚拟现实、认知科学、知觉心理学和教育学等方面的知识做出贡献。该项目将扩大和延伸基础科学的前沿领域，以开展科学和使用VES解决实际问题。具体的项目活动包括：(A)通过在不同环境背景下进行一系列用户实验，探索人类在虚拟现实世界中的空间取向相对于现实世界如何既相似又不同，其中主要实验条件是虚拟现实世界与现实世界。这些实验将填补现有VE空间定向知识缺失的空白。(B)开发和评价虚拟企业内的导航和勘探技术。该项目将在人类尺度的虚拟环境以及多尺度环境中系统地建立和评估不同的导航方法。多尺度虚拟环境包括没有自然人类尺度的虚拟模型，例如分子或整个太阳系的模型。该项目将系统地评估这种类型的VE的导航技术。(C)评估所使用的特定类型的VE硬件(运动跟踪器和视觉显示器)对人类的感知影响，具体方法是将廉价的商用硬件与昂贵的专用高端硬件进行比较。其目标是允许在项目早期开发的导航技术在商用设备上实施。(D)将VE导航系统应用于智能辅导系统。该项目将为现有的覆盖整个大学一年级生物序列的智能辅导系统建立一个虚拟前端，并评估由此产生的系统允许学生学习生物学概念的程度，例如通过在VE中与3D DNA分子互动。

Virtual environments (VEs) are computer-generated depictions of three-dimensional worlds in which humans can navigate to explore. VEs have been shown to be effective in a wide variety of applications and disciplines such as to train miners on safety procedures, educate doctors and nurses, provide therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, and treat children with autism. Despite the abundance of research that shows their usefulness, however, VEs are not widely used. This is largely due to the fact that current VE systems remain expensive and complex to operate. However, with recent improvements in the fidelity and accuracy of relatively low-cost consumer-grade sensors and head-mounted displays (HMDs), it is now increasingly possible to create high-fidelity and yet low-cost immersive virtual reality systems. It should now be possible to make VEs useful to the general public to an extent that was not previously attainable. However, significant challenges remain, such as how to give a person a means of moving around and navigating in a VE, especially when the person needs to move in all possible directions including up and down, such as when exploring a virtual model of a molecule or the solar system. Another challenge is to better understand the capabilities and limitations of VEs as general learning environments.This project will make it more feasible to create VE systems that are both high-fidelity and cost-effective, which will make it easier for educators, researchers, workers in many fields, and the general public, to use VEs to improve knowledge and livelihood. The project will make it more practical to use VEs for applications such as to assess the evacuation plans of a building before it is built, provide therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, or teach children about topics such as molecular biology or planetary phenomena. It has been shown that skills or knowledge acquired in a VE transfers to the real world if the experience closely mimics the real world situation; this project creates a general purpose inexpensive VE in which the perceived experience mimics a similar real world experience as closely as possible, but using cost-effective computer systems. This project take place at a small liberal arts undergraduate college and will offer a number of opportunities for undergraduate student involvement in the research.The research outlined in this proposal enables both undergraduates and researchers to contribute to the body of knowledge in computer science, human-computer interaction, virtual reality, cognitive science, perceptual psychology, and education. The project will expand and extend the frontiers of the foundational science needed to conduct science and solve practical problems using VEs. Specific project activities include: (a) Explore how human spatial orientation in VEs is both similar and different relative to the real world, by conducting a series of user experiments, in different environmental contexts, where the primary experimental condition is VE versus real world. These experiments will fill in a missing gap in the existing knowledge of VE spatial orientation. (b) Develop and evaluate techniques for navigation and exploration within a VE. The project will systematically build and evaluate different navigation methods in both human-scaled virtual environments as well as multi-scale environments. Multi-scale virtual environments encompass virtual models that have no natural human scale, such as a model of a molecule or the entire solar system. The project will systematically evaluate navigation techniques for this type of VE. (c) Evaluate the human perceptual implications of the specific type of VE hardware (motion trackers and visual displays) that are used, specifically by comparing inexpensive commodity hardware and to expensive specialized high-end hardware. The goal is to allow the navigation techniques developed earlier in the project to be implemented on commodity devices. (d) Apply the VE navigation system to an intelligent tutoring system. The project will build a virtual front-end to an existing intelligent tutoring system that covers an entire first-year college biology sequence, and evaluate the extent to which the resulting system permits students to learn biology concepts such as by interacting with 3D DNA molecules in a VE.