Let's have a walk in a virtual world: using Virtual Reality technologies to study the visual guidance of walking

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The past a few years have witnessed a rapid increase in creative economy, especially driven by the explosive growth of the VR industry. Statistics show that the market value of VR in the UK is 46.4 million British pounds in 2016. By 2020, this number can increase to approximately 354.4 million. However, to realise such a rapid growth, one of the major hurdles faced by the VR industry is to create products (both in terms of hardware and content) that can bring natural, engaging, exciting and meaningful experience to the users. The challenges cannot be addressed solely by engineers. It requires an advanced understanding of the human mind and behaviours. Therefore, the development of VR technologies needs input from psychological research. On the other side, VR plays an increasingly important role in psychological research. The effect of VR on the user, be it perceptual, physiological, psychological or social, has started to form a new research area. More importantly, it brings novel experimental paradigms that help address new research questions and form new hypotheses. Many researchers have seen the potential of VR in research, and a market is forming to meet this need.In the coming years, therefore, the interaction between the VR industry and psychological research is anticipated to become one of the driving forces behind the creative economy. My research is a good example of such an interaction. I use VR techniques to investigate how people use visual information and memory to guide their walking, which is difficult to study using conventional methods. My findings will have important implications for making VR systems in which the user can experience locomoting in virtual reality more naturally and comfortably. During the fellowship, I will promote the impact of my research on the VR industry, strengthen my relationships with the industry and establish a link between the industry and academic research. To promote the impact of my work, I will engage with a range of different audiences. I will maximise the impact through publishing my papers at prestigious journals that have a wide range of readers. In addition, I will attend international conferences on visual sciences (VSS, https://www.visionsciences.org) and VR research (IEEE VR, http://ieeevr.org) so that my work can be seen by people working in VR industries and academic research relating to VR. My connection with the creative industry will be strengthened through an internship. I will carry out a small project through which I will learn about the cutting-edge VR techniques and build networks with VR experts. More importantly, I will take the opportunity to learn about the business side of the creative economy, which will be of great benefit when I develop new VR tools for research and application purposes.To establish a link between the VR industry and academic research, I will organise a one-day workshop to bring together local researchers from different disciplines (e.g., Psychology, Computer Science, Engineering, Architecture and Social Science) who are interested in VR, and experts who work in the VR industry. A section will be arranged to encourage discussions between the researchers and VR experts about potential collaborations. The multidisciplinary networks built during the workshop will provide a strong collaboration basis for my future career at the interface between innovation in creative industries and academic research.