VRescuer: A Virtual Reality Application for Disaster Response Training

Abstract

With the advancement of modern technologies, Virtual Reality plays an essential role for training rescuers, particularly for disaster savers employing simulation training. By wholly immersed in the virtual environment, rescuers are capable of practicing the required skills without being threatened of their lives before experiencing the real world situation. This paper presented a work-in-progress Virtual Reality application called VRescuer to help trainees get used to various disaster circumstances. A scenario of a city was created with an ambulance rescuer and several rescuees in the scene. The intelligent ambulance rescuer was introduced as a rescuer/guider to automatically search and find the optimal paths for saving all rescuees. The trainee can interfere in the rescuing process by placing obstacles or adding more rescuees along the ways which cause the rescue agent to re-route the paths. The VRescuer was implemented in Unity3D with an Oculus Rift device, and it was assessed by twenty users to improve the proposed application.