RAPID: Leveraging Virtual Reality to Improve Compliance with Physical Distancing

RAPID：利用虚拟现实提高物理距离的合规性

• 批准号: 2029535
• 负责人: Evan Rosenberg
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-07-15 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2029535&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Leveraging; Virtual; Reality; Improve

Physical distancing is currently the most effective countermeasure against the rapid proliferation of the virus that causes COVID-19, and scientific projections indicate that these practices will be necessary for a year or possibly even longer. As the current circumstances are unprecedented, the compliance rate for physical distancing over an extended period of time is unknown. Many people, especially young adults, typically being used to active social life, can find this physical/social distancing leading to social isolation. Unfortunately, social isolation is strongly associated with negative outcomes for mental health and therefore represents a serious threat to long-term compliance. Mitigating the negative impact of physical distancing on social-emotional wellbeing is therefore paramount, as failure to consistently maintain these practices could result in additional outbreaks or a rebound of the pandemic. To address this enormous threat to global public health, this project leverages virtual reality technologies to facilitate group social interaction that is potentially unsafe to experience in the real world. Virtual Reality (VR) provides the capability to interact with other people in a shared 3D environment, thereby opening the doors for a multitude of shared experiences and activities that would not be possible with other remote communication modalities such as videoconferencing. The aim of this project is to promote the use of web-based VR technology as a safer environment that mitigates the effect of social isolation, leading to better psychological health. The challenge here is the lack of a broader variety of VR content, as well as shared activities that capture the imagination, which would make it compelling and engaging to spend time in the virtual environments. To address this challenge, this project will catalyze a community effort for crowd-sourced or user-generated VR content (or environments) and shared activities to facilitate virtual social interaction during the pandemic, thereby contributing to worldwide efforts to encourage physical distancing. This effort will involve the longitudinal investigation of virtual reality usage and social-emotional wellbeing, which will lead to new insights for the design and development of technology-mediated support systems. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing for months, significantly large fluctuations in the number of people getting infected are being observed. This has resulted in prolonged recommendations of social/physical distancing. For many, especially for people used to a socially active lifestyle, such extended social distancing leads to social isolation that adversely impacts mental health. To mitigate this, this project will enable the use of web-based VR for overcoming social isolation without endangering human health due to physical proximity. In this context, there is a distinct need to create engaging VR environments and shared activities that can be customized for different social groups. This project is divided into three phases: an immediate response to deploy and facilitate the use of online social virtual environments; medium-term activities to catalyze a broader community effort; and a long-term plan for ongoing support and empirical evaluation. In order to rapidly address the urgent need, the first phase will involve: (1) using a web-based infrastructure, creation of new VR environments and shared activities, and deploying and distributing them; (2) creation of onboarding procedures, tutorial videos, and public-facing documentation; and (3) outreach through news outlets and social media to promote their use as an alternative medium for social interaction during the pandemic. Over the medium-term, a broader community effort will be organized to create a diverse collection of user-generated content and shared activities, to maintain engagement over an extended period of time. To this end, surveys will be conducted to identify technical gaps, generate ideas for new scenarios and content, and establish guidelines for the community. The project will continue to support this community effort over the long term. Additionally, a longitudinal study will be conducted to evaluate the impact of virtual reality usage, social-emotional wellbeing, and physical distancing behaviors. Design guidelines and scientific results produced under this project will be widely disseminated to inform the design and development of future virtual reality technologies and applications.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.

物理距离是目前针对导致COVID-19的病毒快速扩散的最有效对策，科学预测表明，这些做法将需要一年甚至更长时间。由于目前的情况是前所未有的，在一段较长的时间内，遵守物理距离的比例是未知的。许多人，特别是年轻人，通常习惯于积极的社交生活，可能会发现这种身体/社交距离导致社交孤立。不幸的是，社交孤立与心理健康的负面结果密切相关，因此对长期依从性构成严重威胁。因此，减轻身体距离对社会情绪健康的负面影响至关重要，因为如果不能始终如一地保持这些做法，可能会导致更多的疫情爆发或疫情反弹。为了解决这一对全球公共卫生的巨大威胁，该项目利用虚拟现实技术来促进群体社交互动，这在真实的世界中可能是不安全的。虚拟现实（VR）提供了在共享的3D环境中与其他人进行交互的能力，从而为许多共享体验和活动打开了大门，这是其他远程通信模式（如视频会议）无法实现的。该项目的目的是推广使用基于网络的VR技术，作为一个更安全的环境，减轻社会孤立的影响，从而改善心理健康。这里的挑战是缺乏更广泛的VR内容，以及捕捉想象力的共享活动，这将使在虚拟环境中花费时间变得引人注目和吸引人。为了应对这一挑战，该项目将推动社区努力，在疫情期间提供众包或用户生成的VR内容（或环境）和共享活动，以促进虚拟社交互动，从而为全球鼓励物理距离的努力做出贡献。这项工作将涉及对虚拟现实使用和社会情感健康的纵向调查，这将为技术介导的支持系统的设计和开发带来新的见解。随着COVID-19疫情持续数月，感染人数出现大幅波动。这导致了社会/物理距离的延长建议。对许多人来说，特别是对习惯于社交活跃生活方式的人来说，这种延长的社交距离会导致社会孤立，对心理健康产生不利影响。为了缓解这一问题，该项目将利用基于网络的VR来克服社会隔离，而不会因物理接近而危及人类健康。在这种情况下，有一个明显的需要，创造参与VR环境和共享活动，可以定制不同的社会群体。该项目分为三个阶段：部署和促进使用在线社交虚拟环境的即时反应;促进更广泛社区努力的中期活动;以及持续支持和经验评估的长期计划。为了迅速满足迫切的需求，第一阶段将包括：（1）使用基于网络的基础设施，创建新的VR环境和共享活动，并部署和分发它们;（2）创建入门程序，教程视频和面向公众的文档;以及（3）通过新闻媒体和社交媒体进行外联，以促进在大流行期间将其用作社交互动的替代媒体。在中期，将组织更广泛的社区努力，以创建一个用户生成内容和共享活动的多样化集合，以在较长时间内保持参与。为此，将进行调查，以确定技术差距，为新的场景和内容产生想法，并为社区制定指导方针。该项目将继续支持这一社区的长期努力。此外，还将进行一项纵向研究，以评估虚拟现实使用、社交情感健康和身体距离行为的影响。该项目的设计指南和科学成果将被广泛传播，为未来虚拟现实技术和应用的设计和开发提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。