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Utilizing Virtual Reality Technology for Increasing Public Awareness for Safe Driving Engagements and Traffic Situational Awareness

Project Details
STATUS

Completed

PROJECT NUMBER

19-690

START DATE

03/01/19

END DATE

02/28/21

RESEARCH CENTERS InTrans, CTRE
SPONSORS

Iowa Department of Transportation

Researchers
Principal Investigator
Nir Keren

About the research

Recent advancements in technology and computational capacity provide a unique opportunity to expose the public to information in ways that allow them to interact with the items under discussion and observe the implication of the interaction first-hand. Keeping up with new technology provides opportunities to keep pace with a rapidly growing driving audience that are technologically savvy and can interface with technical advances and accept this advanced technology as integral to every facet of their life. Making new resources available to the general public, where these new resources can be harnessed to educate and inform them is an opportunity that can be pursue for public awareness campaigns. Affordances proposed by Virtual Reality (VR) technology have the potential of providing information, experiences, and enhancing situational awareness with the utmost clarity and with the potential for a high rate of user knowledge retention.

The objective of this project is threefold:

  • Build three interactive virtual reality simulations (VRS) for increasing public awareness for safe driving engagements for deployment with the Oculus Go VR headset. The three VRAs are:
    • VRS1: Situational awareness for emergency responders
    • VRS2: Impaired driving
    • VRS3: Unsafe encounters on rural roads
  • Examine optional deployment for other VR platforms with enhanced and reduce interactivity affordances
  • Assist the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) with building library for virtual reality application that will be available to the public through Iowa DOT wed platforms, or other platforms based on the type of VR equipment.
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