Using virtual reality to train people for high-risk scenarios

New virtual reality software could help train lifeguards spot a potentially at-risk swimmer before they get into trouble, identify pilots who might benefit from a skills boost, or enable rural fire fighters to practice interpreting the trajectory of different types of bushfires.

At the Performance and Expertise Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, researchers are bringing technology to the question of expertise in particular jobs or tasks: what expertise looks like, how it is achieved, and how it is maintained, particularly with the increasing use of automation and artificial intelligence.

Mark Wiggins, a professor of organizational psychology at Macquarie University, and part of its Performance and Expertise Research Centre, has been using immersive virtual reality programmes to better understand the psychological dimensions of expertise, and in particular what is referred to as ‘sense-making’. “The idea is that if you can identify and make sense of a situation quickly and accurately, you can respond much more effectively,” says Wiggins. “It’s also a way that we can measure changes in expertise.”

The centre, one of 10 new research centres launched by Macquarie University this year, works to realise human potential in a changing world. It brings together experts from a range of fields such as psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, and exercise physiology to explore what ‘expertise’ looks like and how it can be enhanced in different professions and scenarios.

Wiggins is particularly interested in scenarios where poor sense-making can put lives at risk. The challenge with studying these scenarios is creating simulations that are authentic enough to evoke real emotional and psychological responses in the person using the simulation.

“A lot of the environments in which we have an interest are high-risk, high-consequence — places where we can't really put people in dangerous situations and simply hope for the best,” Wiggins says.

Unique set of challenges

One of these is the typical suburban communal swimming pool, where everyone from children to the elderly come for exercise, play and relaxation. Replicating that as a virtual environment has unique challenges.

“We think carefully about the visual environment but also about the auditory environment,” Wiggins says. This means recreating all the usual distractions of such a space, including interruptions, children playing, and even reflections of sunlight off water surfaces that might make it harder to see what’s happening below the surface.

The purpose of this research is to study how experienced lifeguards evaluate situations from moment to moment, and how they are able to spot someone at risk of getting into trouble in the water.

The centre’s virtual reality headsets have eye-tracking technology, so that researchers and trainers can track where the lifeguard is looking at any point in time. This shows that experienced lifeguards are faster in identifying at-risk swimmers and spend more time monitoring those individuals before they get into difficulty. They also visually segment the pool area to help them maintain their vigilance over an extended period.

Understanding what experience looks like means that trainee lifeguards can be taught these skills, both virtually and in real life, in keeping with the policies and practices of their employment setting. “We wanted a tool that was going to be able to be used broadly but dovetail with existing training initiatives and support the capabilities of the lifeguard organizations," Wiggins says.

It’s one of several high-risk, high-consequences settings where virtual reality can be used to understand and improve skills. Pilots are already familiar with this approach as simulators have long been a mainstay of training. But to support training, virtual reality can now be used to assist people to understand aspects of their own sense-making, particularly in confronting emergency situations.

“By helping workers in high-consequence environments track their sense-making skills and compare their performance to people with similar levels of experience, we can provide targeted feedback, reducing the costs of training while improving the outcomes for safety,” says Wiggins.