Project Summary
Enhancing driver education through the development and testing of new immersive VR approaches is the goal of this innovative project led by the Open University. A mixed reality approach will enable users to fully immerse themselves in a virtual driving world while still interacting with the real-world vehicle environment. Drawing on both psychological and technological expertise, an open-box toolkit of tried and tested approaches will be created. This toolkit will be designed to develop fully immersive, mixed reality scenarios that can be utilised for various road safety training, education, and research purposes.
Project Achievements
The project led to the creation a mixed reality environment that leverages video pass- through technology to test and train drivers interactively. We created both 360-degree video and CGI virtual driving environments. The novelty in our design is the mixed reality approach. Our testing demonstrated the ability of our selected technology to personalise the vehicle environment, allow the user to engage effectively with their own mobile phone, and to interact with a virtual environment which closely resembles real- world experience, without any issues of user discomfort and high ratings for immersion and realism. The ability for the user to interact with both the real and virtual worlds simultaneously provides huge potential in terms of research, training and educational applications. The potential impact of a mixed reality approach to driver education is far reaching, not only for the policing and deterrence of offending by the general public, but also for educating industry and public sector fleets and other groups of professional drivers, improving road safety for everyone.
Conclusions
This project has demonstrated clear proof of concept by assessing technology and devising a workable approach for testing and training. Paired with psychological expertise, based on empirical investigations on both the distraction imposed by phone use, behaviour change interventions, and best-practice in policy, this project provides a solid grounding for development of a range of mixed reality road safety training, education and research approaches. The toolkit we have produced, sharing the development process, provides jargon-free guidance on the creation and application of mixed reality approaches.
Next Steps
1. Dissemination of the toolkit via knowledge exchange and networking events. 2. Application for further funding to create a market-ready mobile phone education intervention using our mixed reality approach. 3. Scoping of application of mixed reality approach to other areas of road safety.
