Stocker, Catherine
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Publication Being a Part of the Crowd: Towards Validating VR Crowds Using Presence(2008-05-12) Stocker, Catherine; Allbeck, Jan M.; Badler, Norman ICrowd simulation models are currently lacking a commonly accepted validation method. In this paper, we propose level of presence achieved by a human in a virtual environment (VE) as a metric for virtual crowd behavior. Using experimental evidence from the presence literature and the results of a pilot experiment that we ran, we explore the egocentric features that a crowd simulation model should have in order to achieve high levels of presence and thus be used as a framework for validation of simulated crowd behavior. We implemented four crowd models for our pilot experiment: social forces, rule based, cellular automata and HiDAC. Participants interacted with the crowd members of each model in an immersive virtual environment for the purpose of studying presence in virtual crowds, with the goal of establishing the basis for a future validation method.Publication Smart Events and Primed Agents(2010-01-01) Stocker, Catherine; Huang, Pengfei; Badler, Norman IWe describe a new organization for virtual human responses to dynamically occurring events. In our approach behavioral responses are enumerated in the representation of the event itself. These Smart Events inform an agent of plausible actions to undertake. We additionally introduce the notion of agent priming, which is based on psychological concepts and further restricts and simplifies action choice. Priming facilitates multi-dimensional agents and in combination with Smart Events results in reasonable, contextual action selection without requiring complex reasoning engines or decision trees. This scheme burdens events with possible behavioral outcomes, reducing agent computation to evaluation of a case expression and (possibly) a probabilistic choice. We demonstrate this approach in a small group scenario of agents reacting to a fire emergency.Publication CRAM It! A Comparison of Virtual, Live-Action and Written Training Systems for Preparing Personnel to Work in Hazardous Environments(2011-01-01) Stocker, Catherine; Sunshine-Hill, Ben; Drake, John; Kider, Joseph T; Badler, Norman I; Perera, IanIn this paper we investigate the utility of an interactive, desktopbased virtual reality (VR) system for training personnel in hazardous working environments. Employing a novel software model, CRAM (Course Resource with Active Materials), we asked participants to learn a specific aircraft maintenance task. The evaluation sought to identify the type of familiarization training that would be most useful prior to hands on training, as well as after, as skill maintenance. We found that participants develop an increased awareness of hazards when training with stimulating technology – in particular (1) interactive, virtual simulations and (2) videos of an instructor demonstrating a task – versus simply studying (3) a set of written instructions. The results also indicate participants desire to train with these technologies over the standard written instructions. Finally, demographic data collected during the evaluation elucidates future directions for VR systems to develop a more robust and stimulating hazard training environment.