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Urban Emergency Response using Multi-User VR Environment

Current Students: Roy Brown

Past Students: Devin Southern, Gema Howell, Shea Brown

Status: Current

Over the past decade wildfires have been making headlines. As a result, wildland firefighting has grown to a high level of importance. The US is in dire need of an effective strategy to address this issue. The goal of this project is to create a helicopter training simulation that will aid in the efforts of treating wildfires. The simulation includes various scenarios immolating real-world instances. Real-world instances are in place to develop alternative techniques that may be applied to real life situations. It is anticipated that the user will gain skills and knowledge in the virtual environment that they will then be able to apply to the real world due to the sense of presence and realism a virtual environment can provide. This application has a dual purpose. The simulation may be used for both training and educational purposes. The application will track user efficiency and decision making strategies. Multiple agents are necessary for this environment because it will promote communication, collaboration, and will enhance the decision making process. The simulation contains multiple helicopter agents and multiple victim agents as user controlled agents. The user has keyboard controls to navigate the helicopter. The downpour of rain is achieved with a toggle-able visibility.  The “r” key is used to toggle the downpour of rain.  The “z” and “x” key strokes cause for the deployment and retraction of the rope respectively from the helicopter.

The simulation uses a helicopter to rescue victims from a burning city. The environment includes several agents (avatars) in need of rescue. The victims are animated to show realistic emotions such as panic and frenzy. The landscape is textured with a cloudy skybox that includes multiple buildings. The building architecture is a simple rectangular geometry textured with brick, glass, steel, and other materials. The user has total control of the helicopter and can move in any direction.

 
Client (left-side) and Server (right-side) Smoke and fire created in Vizard.
helicopter to rescue victims from a burning city. Making it rain to stop fire
 
This application has a dual purpose. The simulation may be used for both training and educational purposes. The goal of this multi-user VR application is to track user efficiency and decision making strategies. Multiple agents are necessary for this environment because it will promote communication, collaboration, and will enhance the decision making process.

The user has the option to control the objects within the environment.  The triggered events include:  releasing water and releasing the rescue rope. Intelligenct signs will be added in the perspective of the victim. Intelligence signs will guide the user to safety. The simulation includes audio for helicopter in flight, low audio for the avatars, as well as sound effects for the different actions taking place within the environment. The simulation also contain multiple user controlled helicopter agents.The server view displays all of the agents who are currently using the simulation.

Publications

  • Roy B. Brown II and Dr. Sharad Sharma, "Emergency Response Simulation Using Virtual Reality", Oral Presentation, at the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), hosted by AAAS, EHR and NSF, Washington DC, February 20-22, 2014.
  • Sharma, S., Otunba,S.,"Collaborative Virtual Environment to Study Aircraft Evacuation for Training and Education", Proceedings of IEEE, International Workshop on Collaboration in Virtual Environments (CoVE -2012), as part of The 2012 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS 2012), Denver, Colorado, USA, may 21-25, 2012.
  • Sharma, S., Otunba,S.,and Ogunlana, K. , Tripathy, T., "Intelligent Agents in a Goal Finding Application for Homeland Security", Proceedings of IEEE, SoutheastCon 2012, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 14-17, 2012.
  • Sharma, S and Otunba,S., “Virtual Reality as a Theme-Based Game Tool for Homeland Security Applications”, Proceedings of ACM Military Modeling & Simulation Symposium (MMS11), Boston, MA, USA, April 4 - 7, 2011.
  • Sharma, S and Shete,S., “Virtual City: A gaming tool for training and education”, Proceedings of ISCA 26th International Conference on Computers and their Applications, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, March 23-25, 2011.
  • Sharma, S., “Favorite goal in agent based modeling and simulation”, Proceedings of 19th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering, SEDE, San Francisco, California, USA, June 16-18, 2010.
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