COVID-19: RAPID: Leveraging Virtual Reality to Improve Compliance with Physical Distancing [research project]

Funding agency

National Science Foundation (July 15, 2020 – June 30, 2021)

Investigators

Evan Suma Rosenberg (assistant professor), Richard N. Landersopy

Abstract

Physical distancing is currently the most effective countermeasure against the rapid proliferation of the virus that causes COVID-19, and scientific projections indicate that these practices will be necessary for a year or possibly even longer. As the current circumstances are unprecedented, the compliance rate for physical distancing over an extended period of time is unknown. Many people, especially young adults, typically being used to active social life, can find this physical/social distancing leading to social isolation. Unfortunately, social isolation is strongly associated with negative outcomes for mental health and therefore represents a serious threat to long-term compliance. Mitigating the negative impact of physical distancing on social-emotional wellbeing is therefore paramount, as failure to consistently maintain these practices could result in additional outbreaks or a rebound of the pandemic. To address this enormous threat to global public health, this project leverages virtual reality technologies to facilitate group social interaction that is potentially unsafe to experience in the real world. Virtual Reality (VR) provides the capability to interact with other people in a shared 3D environment, thereby opening the doors for a multitude of shared experiences and activities that would not be possible with other remote communication modalities such as videoconferencing. The aim of this project is to promote the use of web-based VR technology as a safer environment that mitigates the effect of social isolation, leading to better psychological health. The challenge here is the lack of a broader variety of VR content, as well as shared activities that capture the imagination, which would make it compelling and engaging to spend time in the virtual environments. To address this challenge, this project will catalyze a community effort for crowd-sourced or user-generated VR content (or environments) and shared activities to facilitate virtual social interaction during the pandemic, thereby contributing to worldwide efforts to encourage physical distancing. This effort will involve the longitudinal investigation of virtual reality usage and social-emotional wellbeing, which will lead to new insights for the design and development of technology-mediated support systems.

More information on agency website

COVID-19: RAPID: Leveraging Virtual Reality to Improve Compliance with Physical Distancing

Keywords

virtual reality