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

过去几年见证了创意经济的快速增长，特别是在虚拟现实产业爆炸性增长的推动下。数据显示，2016年，VR在英国的市场价值为4640万英镑。到2020年，这一数字可能增加到约3.544亿。然而，要实现如此快速的增长，VR行业面临的一大障碍是创造能够给用户带来自然、吸引人、令人兴奋和有意义的体验的产品(无论是硬件还是内容)。这些挑战不能仅由工程师来解决。它需要对人类思想和行为有更深入的了解。因此，虚拟现实技术的发展需要心理学研究的投入。另一方面，虚拟现实在心理学研究中发挥着越来越重要的作用。VR对用户的影响，无论是感知的、生理的、心理的，还是社会的，都开始形成一个新的研究领域。更重要的是，它带来了新的实验范式，有助于解决新的研究问题和形成新的假设。许多研究人员已经看到了虚拟现实在研究中的潜力，一个满足这一需求的市场正在形成。因此，在未来几年，虚拟现实产业与心理研究之间的互动有望成为创意经济背后的驱动力之一。我的研究就是这种互动的一个很好的例子。我使用VR技术来研究人们如何使用视觉信息和记忆来指导他们的行走，这是用传统方法很难研究的。我的发现将对开发虚拟现实系统具有重要意义，使用户可以更自然、更舒适地体验虚拟现实中的运动。在研究员期间，我将促进我的研究对VR行业的影响，加强我与行业的关系，并在行业和学术研究之间建立联系。为了宣传我的作品的影响力，我将与一系列不同的观众接触。我将通过在拥有广泛读者的著名期刊上发表我的论文来最大化影响。此外，我还将参加关于视觉科学(VSS，https://www.visionsciences.org)和VR研究)的国际会议(IEEE VR，http://ieeevr.org))，以便在VR行业工作的人和与VR相关的学术研究人员可以看到我的工作。通过一次实习，我与创意产业的联系将会加强。我将开展一个小项目，通过这个项目，我将了解尖端的VR技术，并与VR专家建立网络。更重要的是，我将借此机会了解创意经济的商业层面，这对我开发新的虚拟现实工具作研究和应用将大有裨益。为建立虚拟现实产业和学术研究之间的联系，我将举办一个为期一天的工作坊，让对虚拟现实感兴趣的不同学科(如心理学、计算机科学、工程学、建筑学和社会科学)的本地研究人员和虚拟现实产业的专家汇聚一堂。将安排一个部分，鼓励研究人员和VR专家就潜在的合作进行讨论。研讨会期间建立的多学科网络将为我未来在创意产业创新和学术研究之间的职业生涯提供强有力的合作基础。

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.