Development of Virtual Reality Serious Game for Underground Rock-Related Hazards Safety Training

Abstract

Traditional safety training media to transfer safety knowledge specific to the rock-related hazards in underground mines are mainly video or manuals, which are inefficient and bring a poor training experience. In this paper, we designed and developed a serious game based on virtual reality (VR) technology in order to efficiently transfer safety knowledge and enable enhanced interactive safety training. For different training purposes and users, we designed two modes, one for professional scaling training suitable for novice scalers, the other for rock-related hazards perception training suitable for other miners. Our game is built based on game engine-Unity3D and equipped with HTC VIVE to improve immersion. The game pipeline is to have trainees basically understand safety knowledge through guided interaction and then make a self-adaptive practice to fully master it. We evaluated the effectiveness of our game, and the results of the comparative experiment show that our game is more efficient than the instructional video in both training modes. The application of our game is proven to have the potential to change the safety situation of underground mines and evaluate the level of safety awareness and risk aversion of the miners in the future. INDEX TERMS Safety training, underground mining, virtual reality, rock-related hazards, serious game.

Innovating Occupational Safety Training: A Scoping Review on Digital Games and Possible Applications in Agriculture

“…The same time was reported also in [79] and [61]. On the other hand, a time of 12 min was estimated in [23], 15 min in [58,65], 30 min in [65] and 45 min were reported in [45].…”

“…Overall, it is possible to divide the analyzed studies into two main groups: the first one reporting the development and presentation of the games, and the second one related to game assessment. Almost all the studies provided a more or less detailed description of the game: some studies limited the description to the task required to the players, while others provide more details about the objects of interaction and even a wider explanation of the graphic interface adopted [ 23 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. Regarding game assessment, nearly half of the studies evaluated the games in terms of usability, playability, satisfaction and players’ propensity to adopt games as a new safety training method [ 23 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ].…”

“…• even though different technological supports (computer, VR and AR) have proved to be effective and satisfactory [22,23,45,47,56], the computer game technology can be detected as the most used and "practicable" one both in terms of ease of use and play rules (e.g., the game could be downloaded and can be played on one's own personal computer) and in terms of costs; • the game may allow the players to look around to become aware of their environment and has to be able to recreate the decision making processes that operators encounter in different hazardous situations, with the aim to improve operators' capability to react to hazards in real situations [43,54,75]; • games should be developed with multiple levels and should be structured with different and increasing levels of difficulty to be more appreciated [47,51,68]; • the game scene needs to be well contextualized within a suitably designed work environment allowing the player to identify specific hazards [43][44][45]71]; • simulated characters (NPCs) should be present since they motivate trainees by being credible, trusting and helpful [37,45,46,56,60];…”

“…Previous studies showed that serious games and gamified learning methods have been particularly and successfully applied in different business fields [ 11 , 16 ] and in sectors where technologies and mobile applications are used, such as automotive manufacturing [ 18 ], occupational health settings including medicine, surgery and rehabilitation [ 19 , 20 ], sports (e.g., baseball, [ 21 ]) and in hazardous working sectors such as firefighting [ 22 ], construction [ 1 ] and mining [ 23 ].…”

Creating Immersive Virtual Environments Based on Open Geospatial Data and Game Engines

“…Another example for the use of game engines for planning scenarios is the attempt to assess and visualize the solar energy potential for buildings (Buyuksalih et al 2017). Virtual exploration of hazardous environments in game engine-based 3D models has been demonstrated by Ferworn et al (2013) and Liang et al (2019). Ferworn et al (2013) built a traversable virtual reconstruction of a partially collapsed building.…”