Using Interactive Virtual Presence to Remotely Assist Parents with Child Restraint Installations

使用交互式虚拟存在远程协助父母安装儿童约束装置 每三小时就有一名美国儿童死于车祸。如果安装正确，汽车 安全座椅（也称为“儿童约束装置”）可降低婴儿和幼儿严重受伤和死亡的风险， 崩溃了大约三倍不幸的是，在美国的公路上， 安装不正确。一个由训练有素的技术人员组成的网络，其中许多人隶属于全球儿童安全组织， 该国通过定期的“汽车座椅检查”，帮助父母正确使用儿童约束装置， 技术人员与家长合作，在他们的车辆上安装约束装置。汽车座椅检查有效， 减少儿童约束装置的错误。然而，由于存在障碍，这些服务的利用率很低。 访问、调度并发症和资源，以充分满足需求的汽车座椅检查人员。 本研究评估使用交互式虚拟存在技术（也称为交互式合并 现实）-联合和同时远程口头和视觉互动，并暴露于相同的3D刺激-以 远程协助父母将儿童约束装置正确安装到他们的车辆中。如果有效，这项技术可以 补充或更换汽车座椅检查，大大减少汽车座椅安装中的错误数量 在全国范围内，并彻底改变政府，行业和非营利机构如何帮助父母安装约束。 基于对该主题的小型初步研究，我们提出了一项大型随机非劣效性试验， 评估父母，特别是农村地区得不到充分服务的父母和/或代表性不足的父母， 种族或少数民族背景，在与远程专家沟通时安装儿童约束装置 技术人员通过交互式虚拟存在实现了在安全性方面不差安装和学习 安装约束装置的父母与现场远程技术人员住在一起。非劣效性试验是 随机试验，其中一种新的治疗（在这种情况下，互动虚拟存在安装儿童约束） 与已知有效的现有治疗方法（在这种情况下， 限制），以证明新的治疗并不优于已知的现有治疗。 有效为了实现我们的目标，我们将在全国7个安全儿童地点招募1476名家长， 随机分配同意的父母通过交互式虚拟存在或使用 现场技术人员。安装安全的正确性将使用客观检查表进行评估， 安装，4个月后再次安装。我们的目标是证明儿童约束装置的安装是准确的（>90% 正确），当通过交互式虚拟存在远程进行时，这种安装并不劣于 安装的准确性与现场专家，家长学习和保留有关正确的信息 儿童约束装置。

Using Interactive Virtual Presence to Remotely Assist Parents with Child Restraint Installations Motor vehicle crashes cause the death of an American child every 3 hours. When installed correctly, car seats (also called “child restraints”) reduce risk of serious injury and death to infants and young children in a crash roughly threefold. Unfortunately, a very large portion of child restraints traveling on American roadways is installed incorrectly. A network of trained technicians, many affiliated with Safe Kids Worldwide, work across the country to assist parents in achieving correct use of child restraints through scheduled “car seat checks,” where technicians cooperate with parents to install restraints in their vehicles. Car seat checks are effective in reducing errors in child restraint installations. However, the services are highly underutilized due to barriers in access, scheduling complications, and resources to staff the car seat checks sufficiently to meet demand. The present study evaluates use of interactive virtual presence technology (also called interactive merged reality) – joint and simultaneous remote verbal and visual interaction and exposure to the same 3D stimuli – to remotely assist parents to install child restraints correctly into their vehicles. If effective, this technology could supplement or replace car seat checks, significantly reduce the number of errors made in car seat installations nationwide, and revolutionize how government, industry, and non-profit agencies help parents install restraints. Building from small preliminary studies on the topic, we propose a large randomized non-inferiority trial to evaluate whether parents, including especially underserved parents in rural areas and/or of underrepresented racial or ethnic minority background, who install child restraints while communicating with a remote expert technician via interactive virtual presence achieve installations and learning that are not inferior in their safety to parents who install restraints live with a remote technician on-site. Non-inferiority trials are a type of randomized trial whereby a novel treatment (in this case, interactive virtual presence to install child restraints) is compared to an existing treatment known to be effective (in this case, live one-on-one installation of restraints) to demonstrate the novel treatment does not perform inferiorly to the existing treatment known to be effective. To accomplish our goals, we will recruit 1476 parents at 7 Safe Kids locations nationwide and randomly assign consenting parents to install their child restraint either via interactive virtual presence or with a live technician. The correctness of installation safety will be assessed using objective checklists, both following installation and again 4 months later. We aim to demonstrate that child restraint installation is accurate (>90% correct) when conducted remotely via interactive virtual presence, that such installations are not inferior to the accuracy of installation with a live on-site expert, and that parents learn and retain information about correct child restraint installation.