Impact of visualizing teammates’ actions on shared situational awareness in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Despite Virtual Reality being a relatively new field, it is steadily being introduced into numerous disciplines, such as education. Within these systems, particularly in collaborative environments, it is crucial to have a high Share Situational Awareness (SSA) in order to be aware of ones’ surroundings, encourage efficient decision making and effective team coordination. This project aims to study the change in the SSA of a group of players by allowing them (or not) to
visualize their teammates’ actions.

For this scope, an experiment was carried out: a VR game was played twice by two groups of three participants, at a distance of roughly two weeks, testing both visualizing and not visualizing their teammates’ actions. During
such event, their SSA was measured and analyzed through two techniques; namely Situation Awareness Rating Technique (SART) and Situational Awareness Linked Indicators Adapted to Novel Tasks (SALIANT).

SART and SALIANT produced opposing viewpoints. According to the former, both groups showed higher degrees of SSA in their second sessions. According to the latter, both groups’ first session had the highest level of awareness. Both of these results were unrelated to the addition of actions’ visualizations. Possible explanations include the players’ confidence rising in the second session (biasing SART), and the encoders not having an accurate inter-reliability analysis for SALIANT.

Overall, the experiment produced inconclusive results on the impact of visualizing teammates’ actions on the groups’ SSA. Nonetheless, some recommendations for future research may be made: to choose the SSA measurement tool in accordance to the layout of the system that will be examined, to extend the time between sessions, and to ensure the system is suited for the experiment.