Online and Immersive Virtual Environments for Research, Training and Rehabilitation

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Online and Immersive Virtual Environments for
Research, Training and Rehabilitation

• Larry F. Hodges, Ph.D.
• Sabarish V. Babu, Ph.D.
• Virtual Environments Group
• School of Computing
• Clemson University
• October 12, 2007

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Virtual Environments Group
Larry F. Hodges, Ph.D. C. Tycho Howle Professor
Sabarish Babu, Ph.D. Assistant Professor
Jerome McClendon
Patrick Dukes
Jeff Bertrand
Toni Bloodworth
Lauren Cairco
Naja Mack
Phillip Napieralski
Austen Hayes
Adam Fogle
Manan Gupta
Ian Wood
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Virtual Environments Group

• Virtual Humans/Embodied Conversational Agents
• Clinical Applications of Virtual Reality and
  Online Virtual Environments
• Applied Perception and Cognition Research in
  Virtual Reality
• Collaborations with School of Nursing,
  Mechanical Engineering, Psychology, University of
  Wyoming, University of Iowa School of Medicine
• Funding NSF, St. Francis Foundation, Consortium
  for Enterprise Systems Management, Clemson
  University

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Current and Recent Projects

• Training Environments
• Direct Use with Patients
• Basic Research

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Enhancing Nurse Interviewing Skills through
Virtual Pediatric Patient Interaction
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VR-EPI Virtual Environments for teaching and
training hand hygiene protocols

• Goal Train health care workers in the five
  moments of hand washing developed by the WHO.
• Collaborative project with the University of Iowa
  School of Medicine.
• Interactive 3D simulation in which health care
  workers can learn and identify the correct
  moments of hand hygiene.

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Demo Video of VR-Epi System
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Clinical Virtual Reality
Virtual Vietnam
VR Environments for Phobias
Meditation Chamber
Pain Distraction
Balance Disorders
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Virtual Reality in Rehabilitation of Balance
Disorders

• Medical Virtual Reality Center
• Raymond E. Jordan Center for Balance Disorders
• University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
• http//www.mvrc.pitt.edu

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Pain Distraction
Gershon, J., Zimand, E., Pickering, M., Rothbaum,
B., Hodges, L.F. (2004). A pilot and feasibility
study of virtual reality as a distraction for
children with cancer. Journal of the American
Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 43,10,
pp. 1243-1249.
Pain Distraction
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Interactive Virtual Peers towards Research of
Perceptual-Motor Factors Associated with Child
Cyclists in Traffic Situations

• Grechkin, T., Babu, S., Ziemer, C., Chihak,
  B., Cremer, J., Kearney, J., and Plumert, J.
  (2010). How does a virtual peer influence
  childrens distance from the roadway when
  initiating crossing? in the Proceedings of the
  ACM International Symposium on Applied Perception
  in Graphics and Visualization 2010 (APGV 2010).

• Babu, S., Grechkin, T., Ziemer, C., Chihak,
  B., Cremer, J., Kearney, J., and Plumert, J.
  (2011). An Immersive Virtual Peer for Studying
  Social Influences on Child Cyclists
  Road-Crossing Behavior, in IEEE Transactions on
  Visualization and Computer Graphics 2011.

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Motivation

• Bicycle crashes are among the most common causes
  of severe injuries in childhood Revera 85.
• Many children cross traffic-filled roadways on
  bicycle without adult supervision Martin et. al.
  2007.
• 30 between 9-15 years old
• Peer influence affects childrens decision-making
  in performing physical tasks Plumert et. al.
  97.

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Virtual Peer Framework
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Virtual Characters

• Social Psychology
• Social Inhibition Facilitation
• Persuasion

Learning Social Conversational Protocols from
Digital Characters
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Summary

• Virtual Environments can be a powerful tool for
  training, rehabilitation, and basic research.
• VE group has technical expertise and experience.
• Looking for collaborators with clinical expertise
  and experience.