Mobile Virtual Reality Research Articles

P1: THE VITAL STUDY: A FEASIBILITY STUDY OF A RANDOMISED CONTROLLED TRIAL TO EXAMINE IF VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGY CAN IMPROVE SURGICAL TRAINING IN SIERRA LEONE

Abstract Introduction Training surgeons is expensive and relies on expert supervision. Virtual reality (VR) may enhance acquisition of knowledge and skills. There is limited evidence on the effectiveness of VR in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the technical feasibility of mobile phone VR in LMICs and the feasibility of conducting a full-scale randomised controlled trial. Method A prospective randomised controlled feasibility study was conducted. Surgical trainees were recruited from a government teaching hospital in Freetown in November 2019. Participants were randomised 1:1 VR vs non-VR. These were given one-week prior to a two-day hands-on course on lower limb amputation. The VR training involved two 30-minute modules consisting of narrated live surgery videos. Feasibility outcomes included recruitment rates and VR intervention fidelity and acceptability. Result Thirty participants were randomised to the VR group (n=15) or control group (n=15). Of these, 29 (96.7%) participants completed the course. The recruitment period required was two days. Intervention adherence exceeded defined success rates with 100% of participants completing the intervention. There was no unblinding. Compared to controls, the VR group rated statistically significantly higher engagement during the course in 4/6 domains, increased perceived learning in 5/5 domains and increased engagement with pre-course learning in in 4/6 domains. Conclusion VR is technically feasible in an LMIC setting and improves engagement and perceived learning. With minor modifications to the intervention and assessments, a full-scale trial is feasible. Further exploration is required to determine the best outcome measures to demonstrate effect. Take-home message VR is technically feasible in an LMIC setting and improves engagement and perceived learning. Now we need to explore if it can improve surgical knowledge and skill acquisition on a large scale.

Virtual Reality Mobile Application Development with Scrum Framework as a New Media in Learning English

<span lang="EN-US">Virtual reality is a combination of technology that are used to visualize and provide interaction with virtual environment. These environment often depict three-dimensional space which could be realistic or imaginary. One of the problem to build a virtual reality application is not yet available an approach as development lifecycle to build this virtual reality application. In this study we implement a software development project management approach which is Scrum to build a virtual reality application to be a new media for learning English. The goal is to find out how this system development approach is providing a new guide as a project management to build virtual reality application right from the project started, until the application is reach production stage or final release. Also in this study we using the unity 3D to create the virtual environment and C# as the backend programming language to build a mobile application which is made this virtual application is build using cross platform mobile development. The study concludes that mobile learning applications increase student motivation and place students as the main subject in English Lessons to support the teaching and learning process in an educational context.</span>

Virtual Reality Self-help Treatment for Aviophobia: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

BackgroundAviophobia (the fear of flying) can greatly impact the daily life functioning of people with the condition. Traditional exposure-based treatment is hampered by the limited availability of airplane practice situations, which is a result of economical and practical concerns. Easily accessible and low-cost virtual reality exposure therapy may address these challenges.ObjectiveThe purpose of our study is to investigate the effectiveness of ZeroPhobia: Aviophobia (a self-help mobile app–based treatment) in reducing flight anxiety symptoms and depressive and anxiety symptoms. We will also investigate the effects of usage intensity, the sense of immersion, inherent absorption ability, and perceived user-friendliness on the treatment effect.MethodsParticipants (N=114) who are aged 18-64 years and experience at least mild symptoms of aviophobia will be recruited from the general Dutch population and randomized into a treatment group or waitlist control group. By using their own phones and rudimentary mobile virtual reality headsets, participants will receive six modules of psychoeducation and cognitive behavioral therapy, which will include six levels of virtual reality exposure therapy over a period of 6 weeks. Assessments will be conducted at baseline, posttest (ie, after 6 weeks), and 3- and 12-month follow-ups. The primary outcome measure of our study is the Flight Anxiety Situations Questionnaire. The secondary outcome measures include anxiety and depression measures and additional covariates (including usage intensity, the degree of immersion, etc). We will test treatment effectiveness by conducting an intention-to-treat analysis and estimating average treatment effects on the treated. The mechanisms of treatment effect will also be explored.ResultsThe study was funded on September 25, 2018. Ethical approval was received on October 11, 2019. Recruitment closed on May 7, 2020.ConclusionsOur study will further the scientific understanding and clinical implications of technology’s current ability to aid in providing effective, accessible treatment for the fear of flying.Trial RegistrationNetherlands Trial Registry NL70238.029.19; https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/8257.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/22008

VirtualCPR: Virtual Reality Mobile Application for Training in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Techniques

Deaths due to heart diseases are a leading cause of death in Mexico. Cardiovascular diseases are considered a public health problem because they produce cardiorespiratory arrests. During an arrest, cardiac and/or respiratory activity stops. A cardiorespiratory arrest is rapidly fatal without a quick and efficient intervention. As a response to this problem, the Virtual system was designed in the present work. Virtual is a mobile virtual reality application to support learning and practicing of basic techniques of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for experts or non-experts in CPR. Virtual implements an interactive virtual scenario with the user, which is visible by means of employment of virtual reality lenses. User’s interactions, with our proposal, are by a portable force sensor for integration with training mannequins, whose development is based on an application for the Android platform. Furthermore, this proposal integrates medical knowledge in first aid, related to the basic CPR for adults using only the hands, as well as technological knowledge, related to development of simulations on a mobile virtual reality platform by three main processes: (i) force measurement and conversion, (ii) data transmission and (iii) simulation of a virtual scenario. An experiment by means of a multifactorial analysis of variance was designed considering four factors for a CPR session: (i) previous training in CPR, (ii) frequency of compressions, (iii) presence of auditory suggestions and (iv) presence of color indicator. Our findings point out that the more previous training in CPR a user of the Virtual system has, the greater the percentage of correct compressions obtained from a virtual CPR session. Setting the rate to 100 or 150 compressions per minute, turning on or off the auditory suggestions and turning the color indicator on or off during the session have no significant effect on the results obtained by the user.

Design and Analysis of MEC- and Proactive Caching-Based $360^{\circ }$ Mobile VR Video Streaming

Recently, 360-degree mobile virtual reality video (MVRV) has become increasingly popular because it can provide users with an immersive experience. However, MVRV is usually recorded in a high resolution and is sensitive to latency, which indicates that broadband, ultra-reliable, and low-latency communication is necessary to guarantee the users’ quality of experience. In this paper, we propose a mobile edge computing (MEC)-based 360-degree MVRV streaming scheme with field-of-view (FoV) prediction, which jointly considers video coding, proactive caching, computation offloading, and data transmission. To meet the requirement of stringent end-to-end (E2E) latency, the user’s viewpoint prediction is utilized to cache video data proactively, and computing tasks are partially offloaded to the MEC server. In addition, we propose an analytical model based on diffusion process to study the packet transmission process of 360-degree MVRV in multihop wired/wireless networks and analyze the performance of the MEC-enabled scheme. The simulation results verify the accuracy of the analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed MVRV streaming scheme in reducing the E2E delay. Furthermore, the analytical framework sheds some light on the impacts of system parameters, e.g., FoV prediction accuracy and transmission rate, on the balance between computation delay and communication delay.

GestOnHMD: Enabling Gesture-based Interaction on Low-cost VR Head-Mounted Display

Low-cost virtual-reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) with the integration of smartphones have brought the immersive VR to the masses, and increased the ubiquity of VR. However, these systems are often limited by their poor interactivity. In this paper, we present GestOnHMD, a gesture-based interaction technique and a gesture-classification pipeline that leverages the stereo microphones in a commodity smartphone to detect the tapping and the scratching gestures on the front, the left, and the right surfaces on a mobile VR headset. Taking the Google Cardboard as our focused headset, we first conducted a gesture-elicitation study to generate 150 user-defined gestures with 50 on each surface. We then selected 15, 9, and 9 gestures for the front, the left, and the right surfaces respectively based on user preferences and signal detectability. We constructed a data set containing the acoustic signals of 18 users performing these on-surface gestures, and trained the deep-learning classification pipeline for gesture detection and recognition. Lastly, with the real-time demonstration of GestOnHMD, we conducted a series of online participatory-design sessions to collect a set of user-defined gesture-referent mappings that could potentially benefit from GestOnHMD.

Three-dimensional modeled environments versus 360 degree panoramas for mobile virtual reality training

Virtual field trip is a way of providing users with some knowledge and exposure of a facility without requiring them to physically visit the location. Due to the high computational costs that are necessary to produce virtual environments (VEs), the potential for photorealism is sacrificed. Often these three-dimensional (3D) modeled applications use an unrealistic VE and, therefore, do not provide a full depiction of real-world environments. Panoramas can be used to showcase complex scenarios that are difficult to model and are computationally expensive to view in virtual reality (VR). Utilizing 360° panoramas can provide a low-cost and quick-to-capture alternative with photorealistic representations of the actual environment. The advantages of photorealism over 3D models for training and education are not clearly defined. This paper initially summarizes the development of a VR training application and initial pilot study. Quantitative and qualitative study then was conducted to compare the effectiveness of a 360° panorama VR training application and a 3D modeled one. Switching to a mobile VR headset saves money, increases mobility, decreases set-up and breakdown time, and has less spatial requirements. Testing results of the 3D modeled VE group had an average normalized gain of 0.03 and the 360° panorama group, 0.43. Although the 3D modeled group had slightly higher realism according to the presence questionnaire and had slightly higher averages in the comparative analysis questionnaire, the 360° panorama application has shown to be the most effective for training and the quickest to develop.

Technology acceptance of four digital learning technologies (classroom response system, classroom chat, e-lectures, and mobile virtual reality) after three months\u2019 usage

Digital technologies have gained much popularity in education thanks to the cost efficiency they gain through scalability. While the acceptance of some of these new digital technologies has been investigated, there are few direct comparisons. The most established model for measuring acceptance is the technology acceptance model, which can predict the behavioral intention to use the technology. We compared four digital learning technologies (e-lectures, classroom response system, classroom chat, and mobile virtual reality) in terms of their technology acceptance. The classroom response system had the highest level of acceptance. It was closely followed by e-lectures, then the classroom chat and then mobile virtual reality. The students evaluated all tools favorably before and after usage, except for mobile virtual reality, which saw a substantial drop in perceived usefulness and behavioral intention after 3 months’ usage.

Self-Management Mobile Virtual Reality Program for Women with Gestational Diabetes.

The incidence of type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes shows an increasing trend worldwide, and women diagnosed with gestational diabetes are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years of delivery. This is closely related to lifestyle habits such as dietary intake and physical activity; hence, self-management should be continuously practiced. However, after childbirth, women find it challenging to practice self-management due to physical discomfort and child rearing. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an intervention program that is tailored to the characteristics of each participant and allows them to practice self-health management efficiently without time and space restrictions. This study aimed to develop a self-management mobile virtual reality program and investigate its efficacy in preventing type 2 diabetes after childbirth among women diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Intervention with the self-management mobile virtual reality program was performed for 12 weeks. The data of 57 participants in the experimental group and 62 participants in the control group were analyzed. After 12 weeks, the body weight, body fat, hemoglobin A1c, and fasting glucose were decreased in the experimental group compared with the control group. In addition, the dietary habits and health-promoting lifestyle profile were improved in the experimental group compared with the control group. These findings demonstrated that a self-managed mobile virtual reality program could be used as an intervention method for health promotion. To verify the effectiveness of intervention with the self-management mobile virtual reality program, a follow-up study with a larger number of research subjects should be conducted in the future.

Effect of Distractors on Sustained Attention and Hyperactivity in Youth With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Using a Mobile Virtual Reality School Program

Objective: This study examined whether distractors in virtual reality (VR) environment affected the attention and hyperactivity in children and adolescents with ADHD. Method: A total of 40 students (21 ADHD, 19 controls) aged between 9 and 17 years participated in this study. A rapid visual information processing task utilizing VR (VR-RVP) was performed under two conditions (no-distractor and distractor condition). Task performance and head movement during each condition were compared, and additional analyses were conducted after grouping participants into two developmental stages. Results: Children with ADHD performed comparably to the controls under the distractor condition, but had poorer performance under the no-distractor condition. They displayed more head movement under the distractor condition than in the no-distractor condition. Conclusion: VR is possibly a useful tool for investigating the effect of distractors on individuals with ADHD, and children with ADHD are more vulnerable to a low-level stimulation situation than normal children in VR.

Retracted] Facial Expression Recognition Based on Convolutional Neural Network Fusion SIFT Features of Mobile Virtual Reality

Facial expression recognition computer technology can obtain the emotional information of the person through the expression of the person to judge the state and intention of the person. The article proposes a hybrid model that combines a convolutional neural network (CNN) and dense SIFT features. This model is used for facial expression recognition. First, the article builds a CNN model and learns the local features of the eyes, eyebrows, and mouth. Then, the article features are sent to the support vector machine (SVM) multiclassifier to obtain the posterior probabilities of various features. Finally, the output result of the model is decided and fused to obtain the final recognition result. The experimental results show that the improved convolutional neural network structure ER2013 and CK+ data sets’ facial expression recognition rate increases by 0.06% and 2.25%, respectively.

Automated Mobile Virtual Reality Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Aviophobia in a Natural Setting: A Single-Blind, Randomised Controlled Trial

Automated Mobile Virtual Reality Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Aviophobia in a Natural Setting: A Single-Blind, Randomised Controlled Trial

Visual Fatigue Alleviating in Stereo Imaging of Anaglyphs by Reducing Retinal Rivalry and Color Distortion Based on Mobile Virtual Reality Technology

Stereoscopic display is the means of showing scenes in Virtual Reality (VR). As a type of stereo images, anaglyphs can be displayed not only on the screen, but are currently the only solution of stereo images that can be displayed on paper. However, its deficiencies, like retinal rivalry and color distortion, could cause visual fatigue. To address this issue, an algorithm is proposed for anaglyph generation. Unlike previous studies only considering one aspect, it considers both retinal rivalry and color distortion at the same time. The algorithm works in the CIE L∗a∗b∗ color space and focuses on matching the perceptual color attributes especially the hue, rather than directly minimizes the sum of the distances between the perceived anaglyph color and the stereo image pair. In addition, the paper builds a relatively complete framework to generate anaglyphs so that it is more controllable to adjust the parameters and choose the appropriate process. The subjective tests are conducted to compare the results with several techniques which generate anaglyphs including empirical methods and computing methods. Results show that the proposed algorithm has a good performance.

Retracted] Analyzing the Effect of Masking Length Distribution of MLM: An Evaluation Framework and Case Study on Chinese MRC Datasets

Machine reading comprehension (MRC) is a challenging natural language processing (NLP) task. It has a wide application potential in the fields of question answering robots, human‐computer interactions in mobile virtual reality systems, etc. Recently, the emergence of pretrained models (PTMs) has brought this research field into a new era, in which the training objective plays a key role. The masked language model (MLM) is a self‐supervised training objective widely used in various PTMs. With the development of training objectives, many variants of MLM have been proposed, such as whole word masking, entity masking, phrase masking, and span masking. In different MLMs, the length of the masked tokens is different. Similarly, in different machine reading comprehension tasks, the length of the answer is also different, and the answer is often a word, phrase, or sentence. Thus, in MRC tasks with different answer lengths, whether the length of MLM is related to performance is a question worth studying. If this hypothesis is true, it can guide us on how to pretrain the MLM with a relatively suitable mask length distribution for MRC tasks. In this paper, we try to uncover how much of MLM’s success in the machine reading comprehension tasks comes from the correlation between masking length distribution and answer length in the MRC dataset. In order to address this issue, herein, (1) we propose four MRC tasks with different answer length distributions, namely, the short span extraction task, long span extraction task, short multiple‐choice cloze task, and long multiple‐choice cloze task; (2) four Chinese MRC datasets are created for these tasks; (3) we also have pretrained four masked language models according to the answer length distributions of these datasets; and (4) ablation experiments are conducted on the datasets to verify our hypothesis. The experimental results demonstrate that our hypothesis is true. On four different machine reading comprehension datasets, the performance of the model with correlation length distribution surpasses the model without correlation.

Usability of Visualization Platform–Based Safety Training and Assessment Modules for Engineering Students and Construction Professionals

Safety training and assessment programs play a key role in inducing safe behavior on construction sites. The traditional training methods are fraught with limitations. The advent of visualization technologies such as building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) lay a great promise in imbuing vigor in the training and assessment methods. The current study understands the usability of three visualization modules: image, virtual tour, and mobile virtual reality game–based. A distinction was made between students and professionals as well as based on structured feedback. Based on the feedback responses, a nuanced comparative analysis of various visualization platforms was presented. The analysis highlighted that visualization platforms are beneficial as compared to traditional methods. Specifically, the mobile virtual reality (MVR) game–based safety module was preferred by students due to its realistic and immersive experience, whereas the virtual tour–based safety module was preferred by construction professionals due to its easy, cost-effective, and time-saving approach. This study also revealed some major issues in the areas of technology readiness of the platforms.

INSTITUTIONALIZING VIRTUAL REALITY BASED CONSTRUCTION PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Applying Virtual Reality (VR) in construction professional training has been advocated as an effective method to improve learner’s cognition. However, there has been a lack of a systematic approach in VR-based training in the construction context. This study aims to develop a framework to institutionalize VR-based construction professional training design. Virtual Generation and Experience Road Map (VGERM) was adopted in the development of the mobile VR app for use in teaching substructure in an undergraduate construction technology course. A mobile VR app was developed by using a Unity-based platform, namely EduVenture. Procedures of the VR app development were articulated with an aim to demonstrate how the proposed framework can be utilized in fostering knowledge and skills transfer. Feedback of the users was collected through the Course Experience Survey. Findings of this study help gain a better understanding of the key areas to foster the benefits of VR for efficient use within professional construction training.

Children's Road-Crossing Behavior: Emotional Decision Making and Emotion-Based Temperamental Fear and Anger.

Child pedestrian injuries represent a global public health burden. To date, most research on psychosocial factors affecting children's risk of pedestrian injury focused on cognitive aspects of children's functioning in traffic. Recent evidence suggests, however, that emotional aspects such as temperament-based fear and anger/frustration, as well as executive function-based emotional decision making, may also affect children's safety in traffic. This study examined the role of emotions on children's pedestrian behavior. Three hypotheses were considered: (a) emotion-based temperament factors of fear and anger/frustration will predict children's risky decisions and behaviors; (b) emotional decision making will predict risky pedestrian decisions and behaviors; and (c) children's pedestrian decision making will mediate relations between emotion and risky pedestrian behavior. The role of gender was also considered. In total, 140 6- to 7-year-old children (M = 6.7 years, SD = 0.39; 51% girls) participated. Parent-report subscales of Child Behavior Questionnaire measured temperamental fear and anger/frustration. The Hungry Donkey Task, a modified version of Iowa Gambling Task for children, measured children's emotional decision making, and a mobile virtual reality pedestrian environment measured child pedestrian behavior. Greater anger/frustration, lesser fear, and more emotional decision making all predicted poorer pedestrian decision making. The mediational model demonstrated that pedestrian decision making, as assessed by delays entering safe traffic gaps, mediated the relation between emotion and risky pedestrian behavior. Analyses stratified by gender showed stronger mediation results for girls than for boys. These results support the influence of emotions on child pedestrian behavior and reinforce the need to incorporate emotion regulation training into child pedestrian education programs.

Applying Touchscreen Based Navigation Techniques to Mobile Virtual Reality with Open Clip-On Lenses

Recently, a new breed of mobile virtual reality (dubbed as “EasyVR” in this work), has appeared in the form of conveniently clipping on a non-isolating magnifying lenses on the smartphone, still offering a reasonable level of immersion to using the isolated headset. Furthermore, such a form factor allows the fingers to touch the screen and select objects quite accurately, despite the finger(s) being seen unfocused over the lenses. Many navigation techniques have existed for both casual smartphone 3D applications using the touchscreen and immersive VR environments using the various controllers/sensors. However, no research has focused on the proper navigation interaction technique for a platform like EasyVR which necessitates the use of the touchscreen while holding the display device to the head and looking through the magnifying lenses. To design and propose the most fitting navigation method(s) with EasyVR, we mixed and matched the conventional touchscreen based and headset oriented navigation methods to come up with six viable navigation techniques—more specifically for selecting the travel direction and invoking the movement itself—including the use of head-rotation, on-screen keypads/buttons, one-touch teleport, drag-to-target, and finger gestures. These methods were experimentally compared for their basic usability and the level of immersion in navigating in 3D space with six degrees of freedom. The results provide a valuable guideline for designing/choosing the proper navigation method under different navigational needs of the given VR application.

Effective volume rendering on mobile and standalone VR headsets by means of a hybrid method

Abstract:Numerous volume rendering techniques are available to display 3D datasets on desktop computers and virtual reality devices. Recently the spreading of mobile and standalone virtual reality headsets has brought the need for volume visualization on these platforms too. However, the volume rendering techniques that show good performance in desktop environment underachieve on these devices, due to the special hardware conditions and visualization requirements. To speed up the volumetric rendering to an accessible level a hybrid technique is introduced, a mix of the ray casting and 3D texture mapping methods. This technique increases 2-4 times the frame rate of displaying volumetric data on mobile and standalone virtual reality headsets as compared to the original methods. The new technique was created primarily to display medical images but it is not limited only to this type of volumetric data.

The impact of mobile virtual reality-enhanced relaxation training on anxiety levels in patients undergoing cardiac rehabilitation.

The impact of mobile virtual reality-enhanced relaxation training on anxiety levels in patients undergoing cardiac rehabilitation.