{"id":134915,"date":"2023-04-25T11:09:23","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T15:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=134915"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:59:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:59:58","slug":"ucf-leads-development-of-first-large-scale-system-for-extended-reality-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/ucf-leads-development-of-first-large-scale-system-for-extended-reality-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ Leads Development of First Large-scale System for Extended Reality Research"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ researcher is leading a nearly $5 million U.S. National Science Foundation-funded project to develop the first, large-scale system for extended reality human subjects research.<\/p>\n
Called the Virtual Experience Research Accelerator, or VERA, the system will enable researchers to carry out large studies in extended reality (XR) environments, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality and mixed reality, with large and wide-ranging populations. The four-year project will be led by Professor Greg Welch, a computer scientist and engineer, and the AdventHealth Endowed Chair in Healthcare Simulation in Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½\u2019s College of Nursing<\/a>. Welch also holds secondary appointments in the College of Engineering and Computer Science<\/a>, and the School of Modeling, Simulation and Training (SMST).<\/p>\n The NSF announced the funding today as part of a $16.1 million investment the agency is making in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure through its Computer and Information Science and Engineering\u00a0 (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure \u2014 or CCRI \u2014 program.<\/p>\n \u201cVERA could transform the way XR researchers carry out human subjects research,\u201d Welch says. \u201cIt will allow researchers to run studies relatively quickly, using a large number of study participants with wide-ranging demographics, to realize faster generation of better-quality results that are more generalizable to the larger population.\u201d<\/p>\n One goal of the VERA project is to provide researchers with a new and powerful tool that could lead to improved XR technologies that are more effective for the user and make XR research more available to underrepresented groups, such as older adults or people with disabilities, who could potentially benefit from the technology, Welch says.<\/p>\n Other institutions also receiving NSF CCRI awards this year are the University of Pennsylvania; the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; UCLA; and Penn State.<\/p>\n The 2023 CCRI projects will provide researchers and students across the nation with access to transformative resources through platforms for carrying out AI research on social robotics and research in immersive virtual environments that could also benefit AI research.<\/p>\n \u201cA critical element to the success of the AI research revolution is ensuring that researchers have access to the data and platforms required to continue to drive innovation and scalability in AI technologies and systems,\u201d says NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. \u201cThis infrastructure must be accessible to a full breadth and variety of talent interested in AI [research and development], as that is the driving force behind modern discoveries.\u201d<\/p>\n While VERA is primarily aimed at human subjects research in XR, it will also contribute to the success of AI research by providing researchers with a tool for collecting large data sets of realistic human behavior that is representative of the general population, Welch says.<\/p>\n The VERA project will address a critical problem in human subjects research in XR \u2014 a vast majority of the studies rely on relatively small convenience samples of college-age participants that are not demographically mixed and take a relatively long time to carry out, Welch says.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause laboratory-based studies are relatively slow, they are typically limited to relatively small population samples, and because those samples are not typically representative of the general population, the findings typically are not either,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n VERA will combine the ideas of distributed lab-based studies, online studies, research panels, crowdsourcing and virtual environments into a unified system for carrying out XR-based human subjects research. To create a large, wide-ranging pool of research participants, the team will recruit participants from around the country to serve in a standing participant pool.<\/p>\n The system will be comprised of a study management program, the participant pool, and a virtual metaworld where participants can join studies, and researchers can attend meetings and events as well as interact with 3D visualizations of final study data.<\/p>\n Individuals recruited for the VERA participant pool will include those who already own VR equipment as well as those who will have it provided to them. The system will allow for participants to take part in studies remotely, without having to come to a lab.<\/p>\n In addition to Welch, the VERA team includes principal investigators Shiri Azenkot, an associate professor with Cornell Tech and a co-founder and Director of XR Access; Jeremy Bailenson, a Thomas More Storke Professor at Stanford University; Gerd Bruder, a research associate professor with Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½\u2019s Institute of Simulation and Training, SMST; Tabitha Peck, an associate professor with Davidson College; and Valerie Jones Taylor, an associate professor with Lehigh University.<\/p>\nAbout VERA<\/h2>\n
The VERA Team<\/h2>\n