Abstract:

The work environment in which college students (Management) develop their activity can be included in the so-called office environment. These as spaces include various office equipment and furniture, as well as electrical equipment, such as computers, lighting and air conditioning equipment. It is not uncommon to find multi-purpose or leisure areas within or near these spaces. These may include various types of appliances and kitchen equipment for cooking and heating meals. The multitude of equipment and resources included in these spaces, many of which are flammable, carry various fire risks.

These risks are generally accounted for when outlining and listing the building’s fire hazard risk. Based on these general concepts, it is not possible to condense potential emergencies into a single type of fire or main risk typology, mainly because office spaces are part of a more massive building structure in which a hard to list of activities are carried out at any given time.

The response to an emergency may vary according to a multitude of correlatable factors, such as the type of fire, its place of origin, the elapsed time since the start of the outbreak, the morphology and physical layout of the room, the proximity to air vents, the spaces temperature and humidity levels, among others. When faced with an emergency, such as the one presented by a fire, the first response reaction is essential for a positive outcome. Being able to use a simulator in Augmented Reality may be considered a valuable prevention and training tool in the context of office environments.

Educational goals:
- Learn about typical emergencies in office spaces.
- Understand the office space and recognize the various types of emergency.
- Empower users of the appropriate response space to the various types of hazardous situations.
- Test and understand the consequences of inappropriate behaviour in the face of dangerous situations.

A working functional prototype in AR was developed, and preliminary tests were conducted in a laboratory-controlled environment. The prototype was developed using Unity3D(c) Software Development Kit for the see-through Head-mounted display Dreamworld(c) assisted with NOLO (c) tracking system.
The AR scenario is divided into several levels with different difficulty levels, and we expect the users to be able to assess a fire hazard situation and, according to the fire’s origin and through the use of the firefighting resources available, put off the fire and solve the problem.

Users have a time limit to complete the task; otherwise, it fails. The users must be motivated to improve their results throughout time and according to the feedback received (time, errors and feedback about what would happen in a real situation).

The results from the preliminary tests were auspicious, showing the interaction between the user and the hybrid environment was fluid and consistence. Also, technical AR-related variables such as registration and temporal lag of the system performed well.

Future work will aim to improve the current prototype and develop usability tests in a real environment (University class rooms) with final users.

Keywords:

Mixed Realties, Augmented Reality, Fire simulation, Educational Environment, Safety Classroom.