MRI: Acquisition of a Virtual Reality System for Expert Decision Making and Immersive Learning

这种具有同步运动跟踪系统的沉浸式虚拟现实(VR)系统的仪器将为研究和教育提供急需的技术能力，而密苏里州和周围地理区域的学术界和工业界无法轻易获得这一能力。VR系统将支持密苏里大学(MU)大量教职员工及其在不同科学和工程领域的外部合作者的研究和教育活动，这些领域包括交通、成像、土木结构建筑、信息技术、生物信息学以及教育。MU和密苏里州的其他学校计划将VR系统整合到多门课程中。此外，这个基础设施将支持NSF REU站点，以及已经在墨尔本大学活跃的其他培训计划，同时扩大地区层面上代表不足和服务不足的群体的参与。该项目的外联活动将有助于传播最佳做法、技术、工具、政策和服务模式，以简化新一代应用程序虚拟现实系统的工程/操作。这对世界各地的其他校园和研究实验室都是有价值的。最后，计划中的VR系统与公共安全示范中的第一响应者互动将提供一个机会，探索将项目成果转化为社区。这个具有同步运动跟踪系统的沉浸式虚拟现实(VR)系统将使跨多学科的基础和应用研究能够更好地理解复杂情况下的决策，涉及三维虚拟现实数据集中的人机交互和学习。预计的研究活动将涵盖广泛的领域，如：计算机图形学、计算机视觉、机器学习、交通系统、建筑环境原型、灾害应对中的公共安全、计算生物学和生物信息学。项目成果将创造与沉浸式应用程序开发、培训和个性化学习相关的新知识，以造福最终用户群体，如警察、消防员、土木工程师、公共工程人员、交通工程师和教育工作者。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Instrument of an immersive virtual reality (VR) system with synchronized motion tracking system will provide a much-needed technology capability for research and education that is not readily accessible to academia and industry in the state of Missouri and the surrounding geographical region. The VR system will support research and educational activities of a large number of University of Missouri (MU) faculty members and their external collaborators in diverse science and engineering fields such as transportation, imaging, civil structure architectures, information technology, bioinformatics as well as education. The VR system is planned to be integrated into multiple courses at MU as well as other schools in Missouri. Further, this infrastructure will support NSF REU sites, as well as other training programs already active at MU, while broadening participation of underrepresented and underserved groups at the regional level. Outreach activities in the project will help disseminate best practices, technologies, tools, policies, and service models to streamline the engineering/operations of the VR system for a new generation of applications. This will be valuable for other campuses and research labs across the world. Last, the planned VR system engagement with first responders in public safety demonstrations will provide an opportunity to explore translation of the project outcomes to the community.This immersive virtual reality (VR) system with a synchronized motion tracking system will enable foundational and applied research studies across multiple disciplines to gain a better understanding of decision making under complex situations involving human-machine interactions and learning in three-dimensional virtual reality datasets. The research activities envisioned will span a broad set of areas such as: computer graphics, computer vision, machine learning, transportation systems, built environment prototyping, public safety during disaster response, computational biology and bioinformatics. The project outcomes will create new knowledge pertaining to immersive application development, training, and personalized learning to benefit end-user groups such as police, fire fighters, civil engineers, public works personnel, transportation engineers, and educators.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.