The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality for Administering Spatial Navigation Training to Firefighters

Abstract

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building is a private residence or is an old structure, such methods may not be suitable, because blueprints may be out of date or missing.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

Spatial knowledge acquisition from maps and from navigation in real and virtual environments

“…Witmer, Bailey, Knerr, and Parsons (1996) found that VE training was useful in a building navigation task but did not produce the same level ofperformance as map or real-world training. Bliss, Tidwell, and Guest (1997) found no difference between map and VE training in a similar task but did not compare performance to real-environment training, and Philbin, Ribarsky, Walker, and Hubbard (1998) found map training to be superior to VE training. Other studies have shown evidence for learning and successfully navigating solely within a VE (Darken & Sibert, 1996;Regian, Shebilske, & Monk, 1992).…”

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Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety of Software Engineers Using Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

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