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Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety
Virtual reality has great potential in training road safety skills to individuals with low vision but the feasibility of such training has not been demonstrated. We tested the hypotheses that low vision individuals could learn useful skills in virtual streets and could apply them to improve real str...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5405961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28445540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176534 |
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author | Bowman, Ellen Lambert Liu, Lei |
author_facet | Bowman, Ellen Lambert Liu, Lei |
author_sort | Bowman, Ellen Lambert |
collection | PubMed |
description | Virtual reality has great potential in training road safety skills to individuals with low vision but the feasibility of such training has not been demonstrated. We tested the hypotheses that low vision individuals could learn useful skills in virtual streets and could apply them to improve real street safety. Twelve participants, whose vision was too poor to use the pedestrian signals were taught by a certified orientation and mobility specialist to determine the safest time to cross the street using the visual and auditory signals made by the start of previously stopped cars at a traffic-light controlled street intersection. Four participants were trained in real streets and eight in virtual streets presented on 3 projection screens. The crossing timing of all participants was evaluated in real streets before and after training. The participants were instructed to say “GO” at the time when they felt the safest to cross the street. A safety score was derived to quantify the GO calls based on its occurrence in the pedestrian phase (when the pedestrian sign did not show DON’T WALK). Before training, > 50% of the GO calls from all participants fell in the DON’T WALK phase of the traffic cycle and thus were totally unsafe. 20% of the GO calls fell in the latter half of the pedestrian phase. These calls were unsafe because one initiated crossing this late might not have sufficient time to walk across the street. After training, 90% of the GO calls fell in the early half of the pedestrian phase. These calls were safer because one initiated crossing in the pedestrian phase and had at least half of the pedestrian phase for walking across. Similar safety changes occurred in both virtual street and real street trained participants. An ANOVA showed a significant increase of the safety scores after training and there was no difference in this safety improvement between the virtual street and real street trained participants. This study demonstrated that virtual reality-based orientation and mobility training could be as efficient as real street training in improving street safety in individuals with severely impaired vision. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5405961 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54059612017-05-14 Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety Bowman, Ellen Lambert Liu, Lei PLoS One Research Article Virtual reality has great potential in training road safety skills to individuals with low vision but the feasibility of such training has not been demonstrated. We tested the hypotheses that low vision individuals could learn useful skills in virtual streets and could apply them to improve real street safety. Twelve participants, whose vision was too poor to use the pedestrian signals were taught by a certified orientation and mobility specialist to determine the safest time to cross the street using the visual and auditory signals made by the start of previously stopped cars at a traffic-light controlled street intersection. Four participants were trained in real streets and eight in virtual streets presented on 3 projection screens. The crossing timing of all participants was evaluated in real streets before and after training. The participants were instructed to say “GO” at the time when they felt the safest to cross the street. A safety score was derived to quantify the GO calls based on its occurrence in the pedestrian phase (when the pedestrian sign did not show DON’T WALK). Before training, > 50% of the GO calls from all participants fell in the DON’T WALK phase of the traffic cycle and thus were totally unsafe. 20% of the GO calls fell in the latter half of the pedestrian phase. These calls were unsafe because one initiated crossing this late might not have sufficient time to walk across the street. After training, 90% of the GO calls fell in the early half of the pedestrian phase. These calls were safer because one initiated crossing in the pedestrian phase and had at least half of the pedestrian phase for walking across. Similar safety changes occurred in both virtual street and real street trained participants. An ANOVA showed a significant increase of the safety scores after training and there was no difference in this safety improvement between the virtual street and real street trained participants. This study demonstrated that virtual reality-based orientation and mobility training could be as efficient as real street training in improving street safety in individuals with severely impaired vision. Public Library of Science 2017-04-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5405961/ /pubmed/28445540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176534 Text en © 2017 Bowman, Liu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bowman, Ellen Lambert Liu, Lei Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
title | Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
title_full | Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
title_fullStr | Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
title_full_unstemmed | Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
title_short | Individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
title_sort | individuals with severely impaired vision can learn useful orientation and mobility skills in virtual streets and can use them to improve real street safety |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5405961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28445540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176534 |
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