Published on
July 15, 2024
Getting results fast and cheap: University of Bremen's working group "Digital Public" adopted VR Builder for their research project ARRIVE - a decision that contributed to the project's success!
The working group "Digital Transformation of Public Services" (short: WG Digital Public) is an interdisciplinary research group with focus on society and public services. Smart city, urban data, and general digital demographic changes are of concern in various research projects and collaborative activities.
Professor Björn Niehaves and his team are aiming to prepare potential first-aiders for possible accident scenarios as realistically as possible in the ARRIVE project. To this end, they develop first-aid scenarios in virtual reality.
A high number of traffic accidents is happening. Almost 3000 people die in a traffic accident on German streets alone every year. When first aid is properly provided, the survival rate is increased by about 5% to 10%. This means, many lives can be saved with first aid.
Unfortunately, when road traffic accidents occur, many first-aiders are overwhelmed. Completed when acquiring a driver’s license, first-aid courses mainly focus on the practical application of first aid. As a result, first aid is often delayed and in more than 80% of accidents first aid was not given by bystanders at the accident but instead only when professionals arrived later.
The current way of training is missing the aspect of real stress conditions. Traffic noise, presence of gawkers, and time pressure often have a negative impact on the decisions and actions of first-aiders.
The ARRIVE project (acquiring the rescue chain in virtual reality) picks up on these factors. The project team is working on how to integrate visual, social, or acoustic stressors into VR scenarios for first aid. In the future, this should make it possible to test first-aid measures under conditions that are as realistic as possible.
During the project, the researchers will also evaluate the impact of the added external stressors on the learning effectiveness. Stress can have both positive (eustress) or negative effects (distress), so finding the right level of stress induction to maximize the value is crucial.
“So far, there are hardly any VR scenarios that can be used to train first aid,” explains Björn Niehaves. Moreover, these scenarios have so far not focused on the entire rescue chain, but only on individual aspects such as resuscitating injured persons. External stressors are ignored. As a first step, Björn Niehaves and his team identified stressors such as time pressure and traffic noise, which often occur in accident situations and are very disruptive.
The researchers are currently working on a VR simulation of a real accident site into which these stressors are integrated. “Together with test subjects, we then check to what extent stress is generated in the new scenarios,” explains Niehaves. On this basis, he and his team then develop a VR demonstrator. The project can also serve as a model for other stress scenarios, such as pilot and locomotive driver training.
The team had tough time and budget constraints for developing this VR demonstrator. When evaluating suitable external providers, no one could be identified, which was giving a satisfying, customizable VR room experience within these constraints.
So the team decided to develop the demonstrator on their own. Since no professional VR developers were part of the team, they opted for using VR Builder, as it provided the perfect conditions to get into VR development for them.
"We chose VR builder as we wanted to have a flexible system, which allows us to create highly functional VR rooms in a short time. The process editor allowed us to share expertise in the set-up of the experiment." - Raphael Palombo
The process of the VR application reflects the eight steps of the rescue chain.
This process was modeled within VR Builder's visual process editor. Different paths represent different options the user can make in VR. For instance, getting out of the car without turning on the warning light will lead to different results.
"For us, it was important to let users make mistakes and experience the consequences of their decisions." - Raphael Palombo
VR Builder helped the research team to create suitable VR applications to generate scientific insights for the ARRIVE project. When involving first aid providers, the general knowledge exchange was improved and different VR implementations could be presented and discussed. Due to that, the involved subject matter experts now share a common understanding of how first aid training can look in the future.
Working actively on the VR demonstrator also significantly improved the researchers general knowledge about VR development which will be very valuable for upcoming related projects.
When presenting the demonstrator to the funding partner House of Logistics & Mobility (HOLM) GmbH, they were interested in the outcome and satisfied with the results.
Our goal for VR Builder is to let non-VR developers participate in the VR creation process, while maintaining full flexibility for VR developers. The researchers at University of Bremen fully leveraged this and were able to generate great academic results with practical relevance.
In addition, they increased their understanding of VR development. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of today's VR technology is crucial for maximizing the value. When the development of VR applications is outsourced, this understanding is only increased by a small degree and mistakes in basic VR design are repeated, leading to low value VR applications. By internalizing the process and by actively creating, the project team has set themselves up for long term success!
This article has been written in collaboration with Uni Bremen. It has been previously published by Uni Bremen in similar on their website: https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/university/university-communication-and-marketing/all-news/details/improving-first-aid-training-with-virtual-reality