Education and Workforce Training

Virtual reality is proving to be a powerful tool for education and workforce training. Immersive, episodic virtual reality (VR) training, coupled with traditional training methods increases cognitive recall, improves training outcomes and allows users to obtain experiences which may not be without production risks through any other formal experience.

Virtual reality allows students to safely gain experience interacting with and using tools to perform tasks that may be too dangerous or too expensive to allow them to do in the classroom. For example, CAVS, in partnership with the USDA and industry, is building a prototype virtual greenhouse that includes a simulated environmental control system. In the classroom, there are not enough real greenhouses to provide every student with the opportunity to use an environmental control system to manage the greenhouse environment. Also, real greenhouses are home to living plants that provide resources for teaching, samples for research, and revenue for student organizations. If a student were to inadvertently damage the plants through an accidental mismanagement of the environment, the implications could be significant for the student and many others. In virtual reality, students can experiment with systems, experience both success and failure, and learn from their virtual mistakes with no chance of embarrassment or loss of resources.

Related to workforce training, CAVS has developed virtual reality training tools that places workers in risky working conditions and teaches them to identify and resolve safety concerns. The scenarios presented in these tools can be relatively benign, such as a stack of boxes precariously positioned on a shelf, or very dangerous, a fire at a workstation. By using virtual reality, workers can gain experience in any unsafe condition and learn the proper response. In virtual reality, the employer can score the workers response and the system can provide real-time instruction and feedback.

Pedestrian Research

Since 2016, CAVS researchers have used virtual reality technology to study how pedestrians will interact with autonomous vehicles in the future. As the number of self-driving vehicles increases, pedestrians will need to be able to safely interact with the vehicles when they shared the roadway. Building and testing the many possible methods for communicating between vehicles and pedestrians would be expensive and dangerous. Instead, CAVS researchers can rapidly build and test many different communication methods on many different vehicles in virtual reality. Then, participants come to CAVS where they wear a head-mounted display, usually an HTC Vive Pro or an Oculus Quest, and walk across streets filled with vehicles with CAVS-designed interfaces. CAVS researchers record the participant’s position, walking speed, the direction they’re looking, walking speed and any hesitations and use that information to interpret how participant’s respond to different communication systems. In virtual reality, participants can cross virtual streets with simulated traffic hundreds of times giving CAVS researchers an enormous amount of data about how pedestrians will interact with autonomous vehicles.