Table of Contents

Introduction. System Requirements. Design Approaches and Implementation Strategies. Health and Safety Issues. Evaluation. Selected Applications of Virtual Environments.

About the Author

Dr. Kelly S. Hale is Sr. Vice President of Technical Operations at Design Interactive, Inc., a woman-owned small business focused on human-systems integration, which she joined in 2004. Her research and development efforts in human systems integration across areas of virtual environment design and evaluation, augmented cognition, multimodal interaction and haptic interfaces, and training sciences. She holds a patent for a tactile display language, and serves on the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, and Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science. She has received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Department of the Army. Through these efforts, Kelly and her team have developed advanced neurophysiological measurement techniques, including a patent-pending Fixation-locked Event-Related Potentials (FLERPs) approach to capture electroencephalography ERP data in a naturalistic setting, and have advanced real-time mitigation strategy framework and induction techniques to optimize training, situation awareness, decision making, and operational performance through optimization of user cognitive and physical state within simulated training environments. In addition, Kelly has guided Design Interactive, Inc. to be a leader in developing advanced performance metrics and diagnostic capabilities, including behavioral, physiological and neural metric suites for capturing traditionally ‘unobservable’ behavioral data to evaluate perceptual skills and cognitive processing in real-time by synchronizing data with system events/areas of interest dynamically throughout simulated scenarios. She received her BSc in Kinesiology/Ergonomics Option from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada in 1999, and her Masters and PhD In Industrial Engineering, with a focus on Human Factors Engineering, from the University of Central Florida in 2001 and 2006, respectively.

Dr. Kay Stanney founded Design Interactive, Inc. in 1998 and serves as President. She provides executive leadership and strategic direction, formulating and driving key business strategies across DI’s three business units. Dr. Stanney is recognized as a world leader in virtual environment (VE) technology, especially as it relates to training. During her 25+ years of carrying out research in the area of VE training, she has led numerous efforts involved in furthering adaptive VE training techniques. Recipient of 2013 Women Who Mean Business Award, 2012 and 2011 Top Simulation & Training Company for innovation, and the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award. She has an MS and PhD in Human Factors Engineering from Purdue University, a BS in Industrial Engineering from SUNY Buffalo, and is a CHFP.

Reviews

"A key attraction of this text is the diversity of chapter offerings that span a range of successful research and applications in academia, industry, defense, medicine, and education. A second aspect that is very important is the discussion and interplay of the science of learning and applications of virtual environments as well as the underpinning of theory and research in each chapter. I find this interplay to be very important regardless as a means of informing both science and practice along the way."
—Dr Winston "Wink" Bennett, Jr., US Air Force Research Laboratory, Warfighter Readiness Research Division

"A key attraction of this text is the diversity of chapter offerings that span a range of successful research and applications in academia, industry, defense, medicine, and education. A second aspect that is very important is the discussion and interplay of the science of learning and applications of virtual environments as well as the underpinning of theory and research in each chapter. I find this interplay to be very important regardless as a means of informing both science and practice along the way."
—Dr Winston "Wink" Bennett, Jr., US Air Force Research Laboratory, Warfighter Readiness Research Division"… provides a comprehensive view of each of the elements impacting the design, implementation, and total cost of virtual environments. The list of authors features an all-star cast of simulation practioners rarely assembled for such purposes. The book is well organized and describes each of the antecedents of good design in a pragmatic way making it easy for novices or experts to easily find selected topics gain knowledge from reading."
—Robert Sottilare, Ph.D., Simulationist & Adaptive Tutoring Scientist"… a comprehensive guide to the latest technology and ideas in the resurgent field of VE. The editors have brought together a distinguished list of expert contributors and covered a broad swath to provide a definitive guide of the current state-of-the-art for students and experts alike."
—Scott S. Grigsby, Ph.D., Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp