AES-risk: An Environment for Simulation of Risk PerceptionVitor Jorge∗ Luciana Nedel† Anderson Maciel‡ Jackson Oliveira§ Frederico Faria¶

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), AES Sul, Nexo Art

ABSTRACT

In this demo we present an immersive virtual reality (VR) simulatorto measure risk perception in realistic working environments. Itprovides the ideal environment to expose people to danger with nochances to cause them any harm. However, whereas in the physicalwork environment workers have to perform their jobs (primary task)and be safe (secondary task), in a VR simulator they still have todeal with an additional source of cognitive load: the user interface.

Index Terms: H.1.2. [User/Machine Systems]: Human factors—;H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Representation]: Artificial, aug-mented, and virtual realities—

1 INTRODUCTION

Risk perception is the ability of a human being to identify, usingtheir natural senses, conditions that might compromise their healthand integrity. In this context, when one deals with prevention ofaccidents in working environments, it is imperative to evaluate riskperception of the working personnel. In most cases, however, riskperception is a secondary task – although not least important – thatis accomplished simultaneously with the execution of the main task.

In this work we address the impact of the interaction technique– and the number of degrees of freedom associated – on risk per-ception in the context of an immersive simulator developed for anelectricity distribution company. In this business, risk perceptionis mandatory, even in office environments. Our main goal is to de-velop an effective tool (AES-risk) to measure the competency ma-trix for the safe behavior of workers.

2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW

We are interested in a system which is fully-immersive with theultimate goal of risk perception, portable and simple to integrate.With these assumptions, we chose devices and programming envi-ronments that could provide such characteristics while minimizingthe need for development resources.

We designed an immersive VR simulator for the assessment orrisk perception (see Figure 1). The user can navigate through fourdifferent scenarios (office area, substation operation/maintenancesetup, lightning-rod replacement, reading and delivering a con-sumer invoice), identify risky situations, move their head to placethe cross-hair over the target, and then select the risky object.

A Sensics zSight headmounte display (HMD) provides immer-sive visualization. To improve the user immersion, presence andproprioception, an MS-Kinect sensor is used to track the user move-ments and generate a skeleton that allows them to see their ownbodies. The control of locomotion and selection is made through

∗e-mail: vamjorge@inf.ufrgs.br†e-mail: nedel@inf.ufrgs.br‡e-mail: amaciel@inf.ufrgs.br§e-mail: jackson.oliveira@aessul.com.br¶e-mail: fred@nexo.art.br

Figure 1: Snapshot of the simulator in use: the user interact with thevirtual environment using a gamepad to navigate and the movementof his head to change the camera orientation. A MS Kinect is usedto capture body gestures and a HMD provides stereo visualization.It is also possible to see the location of devices and physical spacerequired by the system to run in optimal conditions.

a standard gamepad to prioritize accuracy. The push of any of thegamepad buttons select or deselect items.

Although computer games are usually not fully immersive, theyare by definition perceptual and interactive. Game engines thenprovide many features to simplify the development of virtual en-vironments (VEs). Besides, goals of working personnel can oftenbe translated into computer game goals. Also, the computer graph-ics required to create several visual effects are easily deployableusing an average game engine. When compared to 3D graphicalengines, game engines have the advantage that they map severalevents that are not always available in the graphical engines in aclean way. These events provide a way to create simple games withpredefined goals very fast. We have chosen the Unreal Develop-ment Kit (UDK) since it enables the easy access and modificationof the game environment and logic, as well as a good interface withthe VR devices.

3 FINAL COMMENTS

In this context, we proposed an experiment to determine how thenumber of DoFs in the locomotion strategy affects the user percep-tion and performance in an immersive VE for risk identification.Experts in security inspection defined a set of risks spread in theVEs, and we designed a virtual path from which the user can see allrisks. In order to guide them, the path was marked with arrows onthe floor. Tests with users with solid training and experience in riskanalysis are being done.

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IEEE Virtual Reality 201316 - 20 March, Orlando, FL, USA978-1-4673-4796-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE