Experts Improve First Aid Training With Virtual Reality

Preparing potential first-aiders as realistically as possible for possible accident scenarios – this is the goal of Professor Björn Niehaves and his team from the University of Bremen in the ARRIVE project. To do this, they develop first-aid scenarios in virtual reality.
When accidents occur on the road, many first-aiders are overwhelmed. First-aid courses, which must be completed with the acquisition of a driver’s license, focus primarily on the practical application of first aid. What is missing is training under real stress conditions. Traffic noise, the presence of onlookers or time pressure, for example, often have a negative effect on the decisions and actions of first aiders.

This is where the ARRIVE project (acquiring the rescue chain in virtual reality) comes in, which Professor Björn Niehaves has been working on since January 2023 at the University of Bremen. The head of the working group “Digital Transformation of Public Services” (Digital Public)” and his team are working on the question of how visual, social or acoustic stressors can be integrated into VR scenarios for first aid. This should make it possible in the future to try out first-aid measures under conditions that are as realistic as possible.

Training under realistic conditions
“So far there have been hardly any VR scenarios that can be used to train first aid,” explains Björn Niehaves. In addition, these scenarios have so far not focused on the entire rescue chain, but only on individual aspects such as resuscitation of the injured. External stressors are ignored. In a first step, Björn Niehaves’ team identified stressors such as time pressure or traffic noise, which often occur in accident situations and are very annoying.

The researchers are currently working on a VR simulation of a real accident site into which these stressors are integrated. “We then use test subjects to check to what extent stress is generated in the new scenarios,” explains Niehaves. On this basis, he and his team then develop a VR demonstrator. The project can also serve as a model for other stress scenarios, for example in pilot and train driver training.

ARRIVE will be funded as part of the HOLM innovation funding until the end of October 2023 with a total of 70,800 euros. The HOLM (House of Logistics and Mobility) is a project sponsor within the framework of the innovation promotion of the Hessian state government, with which it wants to further strengthen the competitiveness of the business location Hessen.