Road crossing behaviors of pedestrians in two different virtual reality environments

• Autor(a) principal: Ahmad, M. Asif
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Cameirão, Mónica S.
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/5734
• topic: Pedestrian safety simulator; VR environments; User experience; Pedestrian behaviors; .; Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia

About 20% of all people killed on roads are pedestrians. Virtual Reality (VR) simulators can be used to train street crossing and improve pedestrian safety, but the use of this technology has some limitations that need to be addressed. Common issues are related to the ecological validity of the experience because of poor immersion, movement limitations, and lack of visual and audio effects. In addition, these simulators are often very expensive. To address this, we developed a pedestrian street-crossing simulation that can be delivered through two mediums, a low-cost CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) or a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). These two environments provide a high immersive experience, simple architecture, and a lower cost of deployment. Following an independent samples design, 20 participants were randomly allocated to the CAVE or HMD group and performed a street-crossing task. We measured the percentage of collisions with vehicles and presence through the Witmer and Singer Presence Questionnaire. Our results show that the percentage of collisions was significantly higher in the HMD group. Presence scores were high for both groups, but not significantly different. These results can be used to inform the design of VR simulators for safe street-crossing.