ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0002-0403-0042

Graduation Semester and Year

2021

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Civil Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Fillia Makedon

Abstract

Training and assessment of novice workers are the most vital part of any vocational industry. Innovations in science and technology have led to the creation of new industries and occupations, enhanced productivity and quality of work-life, and increased the potential for more people to participate in the workforce. However, these come at the risk and disadvantage of an increased cost of training and lack of proper training in industries, such as manufacturing. Recently, the use of Extended Reality (XR) systems has been on the rise to tackle various domains such as training, education, safety, etc. With the recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies, the manufacturing industry has seen a rise in the use of advanced XR immersive technologies to train its workforce. Working memory (short-term memory) and episodic memory (long-term memory) are mainly responsible for the process of learning, which is an essential aspect of training. On the other hand, storytelling has been established as a proven method to effectively communicate and assist in knowledge transfer. This research is motivated by the gap between Storytelling and Immersive technologies like VR/AR and how they can be combined to form an effective training system, which maintains the level of engagement and immersion provided by immersive XR technology but also provides the core strengths of storytelling, thereby improving the episodic and working memory of the user. To this end, we present VISTAS Framework - an intelligent, interactive. Immersive storytelling training and support framework to improve episodic and working memory enable personalized training and assessment to facilitate job readiness, well-being, safety, and low-cost training, using Reinforcement Learning methods to adapt the story and tasks the user’s needs/performance. It uses storyfication in an immersive augmented reality workplace environment to train a new worker, support the worker while doing the task and then assess their performance. This framework has the capability to improve the workplace training process. By making it adaptive for various demographics and minorities, and with the help of intelligent learning algorithms, the framework can also be used for varying levels of complex training. To evaluate the framework's effectiveness, several user studies were conducted.

Keywords

Augmented reality, Virtual reality, Storytelling, User experience, Training, Episodic memory, Working memory, Storyfication, Design

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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