Because fire rescue personnel often enter unfamiliar buildings to perform critical tasks like rescues, the importance of finding new and improved ways to train route navigation is becoming paramount. This research was designed to compare three methods for training firefighters to navigate a rescue route in an unfamiliar building. Thirty firefighters from the Madison County, Alabama, area were trained to navigate through the Administrative Science Building at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. The firefighters, who had not had any experience with the Administrative Science Building prior to the experiment, were randomly assigned to one of three experimental training groups: Blueprint, Virtual Reality, or No Training (Control). After training, we measured the total navigation time and number of wrong turns exhibited by firefighters in the actual building. Participants were required to rescue a mock baby (a life-sized doll) following the specific trained route. Measures of test performance were compared among groups by using analyses of variance (ANOVAs). The results indicated that firefighters trained with virtual reality or blueprints performed a quicker and more accurate rescue than those without training. Furthermore, the speed and accuracy of rescue performance did not differ significantly between virtual reality and blueprint training groups. These results indicate that virtual reality training, if constructed and implemented properly, may provide an effective alternative to current navigation training methods. The results are discussed with regard to theories of transfer of training and human performance in virtual environments.Due to the complex and critical nature of fire rescue operations, it is important to find better ways to train route navigation. In situations where the burning building is a public structure or is new, firefighters may learn about a the building's internal structure by studying actual blueprints ("pre-fire planning") or relying upon consultations with on-site maintenance staff (Sublett, personal communication, 1995). In situations where the burning building is a private residence or is an old structure, such methods may not be suitable, because blueprints may be out of date or missing. In those cases, firefighters must exhaustively search through a completely unfamiliar structure to effect a rescue. Exhaustively searching a structure often involves a firefighter maintaining contact with walls on the left or the right side. This allows rescuers to cover the Bliss et al. 73
A crew size model, based on task network simulation, has been developed to examine how maritime operational issues such as workhours, vessel maintenance, and crew structures affect the number of crew members required to sail commercial ships. Input to the model includes the type of ship (e.g., tanker, containership, towboat), the number of port calls, the time spent in each voyage phase (in port, in restricted waters, and in open sea), and the number and types of crew. A dataset contains 150 different shipboard tasks, task durations, and crew assignments. The model simulates the voyage by scheduling shipboard tasks and assigning qualified crew members to each. Decision rules were developed to mimic the
In recent situations such as Bosnia and Haiti, the failure of soldiers to interpret cultural expression has led to embarrassing and potentially dangerous situations. The current research represents an evaluation of virtual reality as a display medium for emotion recognition training. The research utilized a 3 × 3 × 6 mixed research design. Forty-eight undergraduates from the University of Houston viewed a human model that presented facial, gestural, and combined (facial and gestural) emotional expressions by means of a helmet-mounted display, monitor, or set of photographs. Participants then described and labeled the expressed emotions. Participants were equally accurate identifying emotions across presentation media, but recognized certain emotions more readily than others across presentation conditions. This research suggests that virtual environments may be effectively used to train cultural display recognition skills.
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