RAPID: Leveraging Virtual Reality to Improve Compliance with Physical Distancing

目前，保持身体距离是应对导致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，在很长一段时间内保持身体距离的执行率是未知的。许多人，尤其是年轻人，通常习惯于活跃的社交生活，可能会发现这种身体/社交距离导致社会孤立。不幸的是，社会孤立与心理健康的负面结果密切相关，因此对长期遵守规定构成严重威胁。因此，减轻保持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，可能会导致新冠肺炎疫情的进一步爆发或反弹。为了应对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促进在现实世界中可能不安全的群体社交互动。虚拟现实（VR）提供了在共享的3D环境中与其他人互动的能力，从而为大量共享体验和活动打开了大门，这是其他远程通信方式（如视频会议）无法实现的。该项目的目的是促进使用基于网络的虚拟现实技术作为一种更安全的环境，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虚拟现实内容，以及能够捕捉想象力的共享活动，这将使人们在虚拟环境中花费时间具有吸引力和吸引力。为应对这一挑战，该项目将推动社区努力开发众包或用户生成的虚拟现实内容（或环境）和共享活动，以促进大流行期间的虚拟社会互动，从而促进全球鼓励保持身体距离的努力。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大流行持续数月，观察到感染人数出现大幅波动。这导致长期建议保持社交/身体距离。对许多人来说，特别是对习惯于积极社交生活方式的人来说，这种扩大的社交距离会导致社会孤立，对心理健康产生不利影响。为了减轻这种情况，该项目将使基于网络的虚拟现实技术能够克服社会孤立，而不会因身体接近而危及人类健康。在这种情况下，有必要为不同的社会群体创建引人入胜的VR环境和共享活动。该项目分为三个阶段：立即响应部署和促进在线社交虚拟环境的使用；促进更广泛的社区努力的中期活动；以及一项长期计划，以提供持续的支持和经验评估。为了快速解决紧急需求，第一阶段将涉及：(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)创建入职程序、教程视频和面向公众的文档；(3)通过新闻媒体和社交媒体进行外联，促进将其作为大流行期间社会互动的替代媒介。从中期来看，将组织一个更广泛的社区努力，创建一个多样化的用户生成内容和共享活动的集合，以在较长一段时间内保持参与度。为此目的，将进行调查，以确定技术差距，为新的情景和内容产生想法，并为社区制定指导方针。该项目将在长期内继续支持这个社区的努力。此外，还将进行一项纵向研究，以评估虚拟现实使用、社会情感健康和身体距离行为的影响。在这个项目下产生的设计准则和科学成果将广泛传播，为未来虚拟现实技术和应用的设计和发展提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

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.