Towards a Framework to Model Intelligent Avatars in Immersive Virtual Environments for Studying Human Behavior in Building Fire Emergencies

Driven by the fast development of virtual reality (VR) technologies, immersive virtual environments (IVEs) have been frequently used to conduct human behavior experiments for studying human behavior in building fire emergencies. Avatars in these IVEs are usually used to provide social influence and improve the sense of presence experienced by participants. However, limited intelligence of avatars in prior studies significantly lowered the level of sense of presence and reality experienced by participants. Improved intelligent avatars (IAs) are needed for developing high-quality building fire IVEs. A framework for modeling IAs to support the investigation of human behavior in building fire emergencies was proposed in this study. A number of levels of IA intelligence were defined based on the characteristics of avatars in VR for studying human behavior in building fire emergencies. This study also proposed a roadmap to achieve each of these levels of intelligence. A case study was presented to demonstrate how the framework could be used to guide the design of IAs for research purpose. It was concluded that applications of IAs in VR experiments could benefit the investigation of human behaviors, crowd simulation in building fires, and even fire safety design of buildings.

[1]  Bauke de Vries,et al.  Building safety and human behaviour in fire : a literature review , 2010 .

[2]  Ruggiero Lovreglio,et al.  Prototyping Virtual Reality Serious Games for Building Earthquake Preparedness: The Auckland City Hospital Case Study , 2018, Adv. Eng. Informatics.

[3]  Nicole Dash,et al.  Evacuation Decision Making and Behavioral Responses: Individual and Household , 2007 .

[4]  Jing Lin,et al.  Assessing the influence of repeated exposures and mental stress on human wayfinding performance in indoor environments using virtual reality technology , 2019, Adv. Eng. Informatics.

[5]  Max Kinateder,et al.  Social influence in a virtual tunnel fire--influence of conflicting information on evacuation behavior. , 2014, Applied ergonomics.

[6]  Nikolai W. F. Bode,et al.  Human exit route choice in virtual crowd evacuations , 2013, Animal Behaviour.

[7]  Enrico Quagliarini,et al.  Towards creating a combined database for earthquake pedestrians’ evacuation models , 2016 .

[8]  Christopher Jarrold,et al.  Exploring block construction and mental imagery: Evidence of atypical orientation discrimination in Williams syndrome , 2004 .

[9]  Sharad Sharma,et al.  Immersive virtual reality environment of a subway evacuation on a cloud for disaster preparedness and response training , 2014, 2014 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Human-like Intelligence (CIHLI).

[10]  Ruggiero Lovreglio,et al.  A study of herding behaviour in exit choice during emergencies based on random utility theory. , 2016 .

[11]  Max T Kinateder,et al.  Risk perception in fire evacuation behavior revisited: definitions, related concepts, and empirical evidence , 2015, Fire science reviews.

[12]  Max Kinateder,et al.  Social Influence on Evacuation Behavior in Real and Virtual Environments , 2016, Front. Robot. AI.

[13]  Bernhard Nebel,et al.  Outline of an Empirical Study on the Effects of Emotions on Strategic Behavior in Virtual Emergencies , 2011, ACII.

[14]  David V. Canter,et al.  The decision to evacuate: a study of the motivations which contribute to evacuation in the event of fire , 1985 .

[15]  Peter B. Luh,et al.  The effects of information and hazard on evacuee behavior in virtual reality , 2018, Fire Safety Journal.

[16]  Nan Li,et al.  Emotional Response-Based Approach for Assessing the Sense of Presence of Subjects in Virtual Building Evacuation Studies , 2017, J. Comput. Civ. Eng..

[17]  Elmar Nöth,et al.  Application of Automatic Speech Recognition to Quantitative Assessment of Tracheoesophageal Speech with Different Signal Quality , 2008, Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica.

[18]  Francisco Rebelo,et al.  Effects of competing environmental variables and signage on route-choices in simulated everyday and emergency wayfinding situations , 2014, Ergonomics.

[19]  Yuan Luo,et al.  Simulation of Emergency Evacuation in Virtual Reality , 2008 .

[20]  Damian Schofield,et al.  Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: A new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model , 2009, Behavior research methods.

[21]  Majid Sarvi,et al.  Crowd behaviour and motion: Empirical methods , 2018 .

[22]  Gourab Sen Gupta,et al.  Voice recognition based wireless home automation system , 2011, 2011 4th International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM).

[23]  Luca Chittaro,et al.  Psychological response to an emergency in virtual reality: Effects of victim ethnicity and emergency type on helping behavior and navigation , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[24]  Edwin R. Galea,et al.  The UK WTC 9/11 evacuation study: an overview of findings derived from first‐hand interview data and computer modelling , 2012 .

[25]  Rudolph P. Darken,et al.  Spatial Orientation, Wayfinding, and Representation. , 2014 .