CHS: Small: Transforming the Architectural Design Review Process through Collaborative Embodiment in HMD-Based Immersive Virtual Environments

沉浸式虚拟现实（IVR）技术有可能从根本上改变建筑设计和建筑行业，使个人和团体能够在设计环境建成之前对其进行准确和直观的体验理解。为了帮助实现这一承诺，PI和她的团队将在这个项目中追求多方面的研究议程，寻求开发和部署低成本、多用户、基于头戴式显示器（HMD）的IVR技术，以更有效地支持建筑/工程/施工设计审查的决策过程。该研究将解决两个关键挑战：使个人利益相关者能够更准确地理解设计的室内空间的3D空间结构和功能，并在现实使用条件下可靠地评估其美学和功能适用性；并通过在审查过程中使涉众组共同沉浸在虚拟模型中来促进有效的协作设计审查。项目成果承诺为建筑师、建筑商和他们的客户提供立竿见日的好处，他们将能够更容易地评估设计空间的适用性，以满足他们的需求。这项工作也有可能提高IVR技术的有效性，使其可以用于更广泛的合作和体验目的，从教育和培训到心理治疗和康复领域。此外，通过在视觉想象的基本概念教学中更广泛有效地使用IVR技术，并促进计算机科学、建筑和设计领域教师和学生之间更紧密的跨学科合作，该研究有可能支持设计教育的重大进步。这项雄心勃勃的研究计划包括三个关键部分。PI和她的团队将开发强大的方法，为个人用户提供在基于hmd的IVR中移动时能够看到视觉上忠实的动态渲染的自己身体的3D表示的能力，同时定量评估替代体现方法对人们在虚拟环境中空间感知判断的准确性的影响。该团队还将开发强大的方法，为多个用户提供在广域、基于hmd的IVR中共同定位时能够看到彼此的能力，同时对最佳实践表示方法进行定性评估，以支持当多个用户作为一个群体沉浸在共享虚拟环境中时，有效的人际沟通和同时准确的空间理解。最后，该团队将创建一个系统，用于填充具有现实行为和交互式响应的自主虚拟代理的设计环境，以及体验动态填充对空间感知和功能适用性判断的影响的定性和定量测试，而不是静态或无人的沉浸式虚拟环境，以及将评估代理动态行为的主观和客观现实性的相关努力。

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) technology has the potential to fundamentally transform the architectural design and building industries, by enabling individuals and groups to achieve an accurate and intuitive experiential understanding of a designed environment before it is built. To help realize this promise, the PI and her team will in this project pursue a multi-faceted research agenda that seeks to develop and deploy low-cost, multi-user, head-mounted-display (HMD) based IVR technology to more effectively support the decision-making process in architecture / engineering / construction design reviews. The research will address two critical challenges: to enable individual stakeholders to achieve a more accurate understanding of the 3D spatial structure and affordances for action in a designed interior space and to reliably assess its aesthetic and functional suitability under realistic use conditions; and to facilitate effective collaborative design review by enabling groups of stakeholders to be jointly immersed in the virtual model during the review process. Project outcomes promise to offer immediate benefits to architects, builders, and their clients, who will be able to more readily evaluate the suitability of designed spaces to meet their needs. The work also has the potential to enhance the effectiveness with which IVR technology can be used for a wider variety of collaborative and experiential purposes, in areas from education and training to psychotherapy and rehabilitation. In addition, the research has the potential to support significant advances in design education, by enabling the broader effective use of IVR technology in teaching fundamental concepts of visual imagination, and to foster closer interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty and students in computer science, architecture and design.The ambitious research plan consists of three key components. The PI and her team will develop robust methods for providing individual users with the ability to see a visually faithful, dynamically rendered 3D representation of their own body while they are physically moving about within an HMD-based IVR, along with a quantitative assessment of the impact of alternative embodiment methodologies on the accuracy of peoples' spatial perception judgments in the virtual environment. The team will also develop robust methods for providing multiple users with the ability to see each other while being co-located in a wide-area, HMD-based IVR, along with a qualitative assessment of best-practice representational approaches for supporting effective interpersonal communication and simultaneous accurate spatial understanding when multiple users are immersed as a group in a shared virtual environment. Finally, the team will create a system for populating a designed environment with realistically behaving and interactively responsive autonomous virtual agents, along with qualitative and quantitative testing of the impact on spatial perception and functional suitability judgments from experiencing dynamically populated, as opposed to static or unpopulated, immersive virtual environments, plus related efforts that will assess the subjective and objective realism of the agents' dynamic behavior.