Use inspired research in using virtual reality for safe operation of exemplar critical infrastructure systems
Creators: name: Yu, Yi
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2022

description: Large urban centers have been facing continued challenges in maintaining the deteriorating infrastructure systems as well as accommodating emerging types of transportation modes and other technologies. One common challenge for infrastructure stakeholders is the lack of means to create high-fidelity digital environments to simulate and support required infrastructure operations and assessments. The traditional infrastructure workforce training and traffic safety data analyzing methods often fall short of helping decision-makers grasp the true complexity of infrastructure operation and use, which could significantly impact the quality of service once these tasks are executed.Virtual reality (VR) based simulation has the potential to fill these needs and has spurred an explosive amount of VR studies in civil engineering to explore its potential. Despite the wealthy body of studies on VR in civil engineering and these envisioned potentials, several critical barriers retarding the wide adoption of VR for infrastructure applications. The first barrier is the lack of a development framework for VR-based civil infrastructure interaction simulations such that VR systems across infrastructure use cases are comparable to a degree, warranting triage of knowledge gaps in VR-based simulation for civil infrastructure use cases. The second barrier is on the designing realistic VR simulation environments, which should be realistic, responsive, and reconfigurable such that they can represent a broad range of scenarios, which are representatives of the real situations facing the infrastructure workers or users. This will require the design and critical validation of VR model foundations (geometry, contextual information, etc.) as well as sophisticated virtual human and computer interactions. The last barrier is on lack of understanding and acceptance of VR technologies among infrastructure owners. In general, there is a lack of understanding of how today’s VR technologies mesh with the current needs of infrastructure management.The goal of this study is to help infrastructure stakeholders achieve a better understanding of the utility of VR technologies and encourage wider acceptance of VR technologies in the life-cycle management of infrastructure systems. The research work undertaken in this study includes an in-depth literature synthesis of VR applications in civil engineering and use-inspired research of VR technologies in two exemplar infrastructure systems, namely VR-mediated underground utility mark-out and e-scooter riding simulation. These two use cases were carefully chosen to ensure there are new contributions to VR knowledge in civil engineering other than helping stakeholders better understand the potential of VR technologies.More specifically, I conducted an in-depth literature survey of VR applications related to civil engineering; the result is a VR system development framework for interaction simulation with civil infrastructure. In the underground utility mark-out simulation, I designed a VR-based utility mark-out training system. I tested whether the VR environment can provide effective training on utility mark-out. I also tested whether the VR environment can be used to evaluate factors that may contribute to incorrect mark-out results, therefore answering a broader range of theoretical questions related to designing safe mark-out regulations and policies. The VR study showed that high-fidelity VR environments could be built for utility mark-out training, and the VR training group has the same knowledge level as the traditional training group; the VR group’s training result has a better average and smaller variances, indicating that the VR training can lead to more consistency in training results. The study results also showed that the mark-out VR system could be used to study the contributing factors of incorrect mark-out results. In the VR e-scooter riding simulation, I designed and evaluated a VR-based e-scooter simulator system that can simulate real-world riding experiences. In the simulation, the system can provide various safety-related experimental methods, such as reconfiguring urban streets through tactical urbanism, changing speed limits, changing ambient environment conditions, etc... I also designed and evaluated advanced safety analysis tools in the VR environment, and these tools include but are not limited to, user attention analysis through eye-tracking, line of sight analysis through virtual visibility detection, and near miss detection. The riding experiment of the system tested the high fidelity of the VR environment, mechanism of function, and exportable simulation data. Finally, the comparative study of similar systems also showed the advantages of this system compared to other existing e-scooter simulating systems. The overall contribution of this dissertation research is designing a VR system development framework for interaction simulation with civil infrastructure; using the framework to develop and evaluate two VR simulation systems in the use cases of VR-based underground utility mark-out training for training utility workforce and VR-based e-scooter riding for designing safer transportation infrastructure. The use cases expanded knowledge about contributing factors of incorrect utility mark-outs and provided new safety analysis tools to help the future transportation infrastructure design.The individual components of this research provide further contributions along the following fronts:(1) The newly designed VR system development framework for interaction simulation with civil infrastructure can guide the preparation, implementation, evaluation, and modification process of VR interaction simulation applications for civil infrastructure use cases. This new framework incorporates elements from numerous existing VR-based studies for civil infrastructure, addresses their limitations, and recommends the use of emerging types of sensors and data. It can provide development guidance to VR research on a broad range of interaction simulations with civil infrastructure.(2) The development and evaluation of a VR-based underground utility mark-out training system that can:a) effectively simulate real-world underground utility mark-out procedures such as pipeline locating, painting marking, and flagging through the newly designed virtual interaction functions. b) provide an equivalent training result when compared to traditional paper-based underground utility mark-out training, and partially replace or complement existing expensive mock-up underground utility training facilities.c) enable the evaluation of factors that may contribute to incorrect mark-outs, such as incomplete utility maps or other types of utility map-pipe inconsistency, in different virtual underground utility mark-out scenarios.This use-inspired case study also represents the first study in VR-based underground utility mark-out training. (3) The development and evaluation of a VR-based e-scooter riding system that can:a) support virtual e-scooter experiment and safety analysis by realistically simulating real-world riding experiences in a safe virtual environment with natural steering control and physical vibration feedback.b) provide various safety-related environmental factors in VR, such as reconfigurable bike lane designs and adjustable speed limits, etc., which can facilitate virtual e-scooter experiments.c) enable advanced safety analysis in VR, the analysis tools such as virtual near miss detection, virtual visibility detection, and virtual user attention analysis that can generate safety data to help design safer transportation infrastructure. This use-inspired case study designed multiple virtual functions for the first time in similar style VR e-scooter studies and can produce valuable synthetic safety data.