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

虚拟环境（VEs）是计算机生成的三维世界的描述，人类可以在其中导航和探索。ve已被证明在各种各样的应用和学科中都是有效的，比如培训矿工的安全程序，教育医生和护士，提供创伤后应激障碍的治疗，以及治疗自闭症儿童。然而，尽管大量的研究表明了它们的有用性，但虚拟现实并没有被广泛使用。这主要是由于当前的VE系统仍然昂贵且操作复杂。然而，随着最近相对低成本的消费级传感器和头戴式显示器（hmd）的保真度和精度的提高，现在越来越有可能创建高保真度和低成本的沉浸式虚拟现实系统。现在应该有可能使虚拟企业对一般公众有用到以前无法达到的程度。然而，重大挑战仍然存在，例如如何为人们提供在VE中移动和导航的手段，特别是当人们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现实作为通用学习环境的能力和局限性。该项目将使创建既高保真又具有成本效益的虚拟企业系统变得更加可行，这将使教育工作者、研究人员、许多领域的工作人员和普通公众更容易使用虚拟企业来提高知识和改善生活。该项目将使虚拟现实应用于诸如在建筑物建成前评估疏散计划，为创伤后应激障碍提供治疗，或教授儿童分子生物学或行星现象等主题的应用更加实用。研究表明，在虚拟现实中获得的技能或知识，如果体验与现实世界的情况非常接近，就会转移到现实世界中；这个项目创造了一个通用的廉价虚拟现实，在这个虚拟现实中，感知到的体验尽可能地模仿类似的现实世界体验，但使用的是经济高效的计算机系统。这个项目发生在一个小型的文科本科学院，将为本科生参与研究提供一些机会。本提案中概述的研究使本科生和研究人员能够为计算机科学，人机交互，虚拟现实，认知科学，感知心理学和教育方面的知识体系做出贡献。该项目将扩大和扩展基础科学的前沿，需要进行科学研究和解决实际问题。具体项目活动包括：(a)通过在不同的环境背景下进行一系列用户实验，探索虚拟现实中人类空间取向与现实世界的相似和不同之处，其中主要实验条件是虚拟现实与现实世界。这些实验将填补现有VE空间定向知识的空白。(b)在VE内开发和评价导航和勘探技术。该项目将系统地构建和评估人类尺度虚拟环境以及多尺度环境中的不同导航方法。多尺度虚拟环境包含了没有自然人类尺度的虚拟模型，例如一个分子或整个太阳系的模型。该项目将系统地评估这种类型VE的导航技术。(c)评价所使用的特定类型的虚拟现实硬件（运动追踪器和视觉显示器）对人类感知的影响，特别是通过比较廉价的商品硬件和昂贵的专门高端硬件。目标是允许在项目早期开发的导航技术在商用设备上实现。(d)将VE导航系统应用于智能辅导系统。该项目将为现有的涵盖大学一年级生物序列的智能辅导系统构建虚拟前端，并评估最终系统在多大程度上允许学生通过与VE中的3D DNA分子相互作用来学习生物学概念。

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.