VRSafe

posted on 12 Jul 2018 by chek

A VR experience POC that shows how VR can be used to inculcate safe cycling habits and for non-cyclists to empathize with cycling on the road.

Brief

Virtual Road Safety (VRSafe) is a virtual reality (VR) experience platform that allows cyclists to practice safe cycling on Singaporean roads and Park Connector Networks (PCNs). VRSafe is an investigation into an integrated hardware and software development effort to devise a cycling VR experience.

Hardware development involves putting together a bicycle on a stationary trainer which sends cycling data to a VR headset. Custom hardware may also need to be devised, which includes hardware for detecting hand gestures (i.e., signalling), obtaining steering input from the handlebar and detecting braking input from the brake levers.

Software development will involve implementing the codebase for displaying the entire VR environment in the VR headset, generating interactions via processing various inputs from the bicycle, and implementing various artificial intelligence scripts for objects in the VR environment. Software also includes the creation of various art assets for the VR environment, like backgrounds from 360 video captures, as well as car, pedestrian, bicycle and PMD 3D models.

Various types of VR experiences have been prototyped to evaluate the appropriate design for our goals.

The first video below shows an experience based on a visually realistic 360˚ video-based environment.

The 2nd video below is based on hand-crafted 3D environments to explore deeper levels of interaction in the cycling experience.

Members

SIT

Safe Cycling Task Force

Outputs

Students in a DigiPen Software Engineering module (CS365) have made Google Cardboard-based VR prototypes for our collaborators at the Safe Cycling Task Force.

Here’s Steven trying out one of the experiences amongst the groups of students listening to his feedback. vrsafe-students-sctf

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by a Seed Grant from the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT).