Serious 3D Game over a Cluster Computing for Situated Learning of Traffic Signals

Abstract

This research presents a serious 3D game over a computer cluster that allows the learning of traffic signals so that the child is a responsible driver and pedestrian. For this purpose, we have applied an agile methodology to be able to produce a driving and pedestrian simulation system as a serious game, which includes a three-layer hierarchical architecture (orientation layer, management layer, and control layer). This architecture can be used to simulate three environments that are: a) Driver’s environment; b) Pedestrian environment; c) Vehicle traffic observer environment. All these environments are controlled by intelligent agents that allow the user to handle the autonomous longitudinal control, the relative distance, the speed of the cars, the collisions between vehicles, the pedestrian collision, excess of the speed limit, circulation in the opposite direction, and respect of traffic signals. Our solution to traffic problems has been validated by the execution of several tests in public schools, and the results demonstrate that this simulation application encourages learning in road safety education for children between 9 and 12 years old, using a distributed environment with a computational cluster in the cloud.