VRx – CSE Senior Design

Team Name

VRx

Timeline

Spring 2020 – Summer 2020

Students

Joshua Tran
Matthew Thi
Vishesh Gupta
Kyal Nguyen

Sponsor

Jennifer Roye and RaeAnna Jeffers
UTA Computer Science Engineering Department
UTA Nursing Department
UTA Library Department

Abstract

The VR Education Sim: Post-Mortem Care is designed to bring realism, functionality, and interactivity to a world brought to life through the Unity game engine. Thus, the program is implemented to fully encase the experience of nurses in a home environment caring for their patient and the patient’s family after death. Because this is for educational use, our requirements are strict and clearly defined. All functionality is based on the concepts of realism and training for a brief introduction into the world of nursing.

Background

The Nursing Department lacks realistic training simulations for post mortem care. Their current solution, vSim, has been criticized for its unrealistic implementation and lack of training in social interactions with the patient. Simply put, nurses do not develop a relationship with the vSim patient in the same way they would develop a relationship with a patient in a real work scenario. Therefore, many nurses are unprepared for the emotional toll that caring for a terminally ill patient can have on them. In order to mitigate this issue, the Nursing and Education Departments at the University of Texas at Arlington have requested a virtual reality solution. The Nursing Department will be able to make better use of a virtual reality solution as the program will be able to be more realistic than vSim, and focus more on the social aspect of healthcare as well. The Education Department will be able to use a virtual reality solution as well, as the program will be expandable. In other words, by building and utilizing different assets, the simulation can be used to train students in other departments. Ultimately, VRx will be developing the base platform for this virtual reality simulation so that it may be expanded upon by future developers.

The sponsors for this project are Jennifer Roye of the Nursing Department and RaeAnna Jeffers of the Education Department. The relationship between the sponsors and the development team is purely professional, and no member of the development team previously knew either of the sponsors. Jennifer Roye is sponsoring the project due to the Nursing Department’s need for a better training simulation for palliative care. RaeAnna Jeffers is sponsoring the project due to the need for better training simulations for every Department at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Project Requirements

List highest priority requirements here (top 10)

Any electrical wiring must be completed in compliance with the National Electric Code (NEC) Wiring Compliance.
Any fabrication equipment provided used in the development of the project shall be used in accordance with OSHA standard LOTO procedures.
The system will keep track of a Nurse Performance Evaluation.The system will keep track of which tasks have been performed and if tasks have been performed in the appropriate order.
The Post-Mortem Care scenario will take place entirely within the Home Environment.
The nurse will be expected to confirm the death of the patient before proceeding to cleaning.
The last task the nurse will be expected to perform will be to notify the proper agencies of the patient’s death and to request the patient’s body be removed from the Home Environment.
After the process of cleaning the patient, the nurse will be expected to consult with a family member.
The user will participate in patient cleaning and bed sheets folding. During the process of cleaning the patient, the nurse will be expected to engage in a process in which they roll the patient’ body over in order to clean and fold the bed sheets.
When beginning the simulation, the nurse will be required to ask a family member to confirm the patient’s name and the patient’s date of birth.
The simulation must be able to support the addition of new assets and new scenarios.

System Overview

Our application will use the Entity-Component-System (ECS), In our application, the system layer will be called the Engine layer inorder to avoid confusion.

The Engine layer is responsible for updating the system at each frame, collecting user input, telling the Entity layer the user’s input, and telling the Entity layer how each entity was updated. The Engine layer provides post processing features as well. It communicates with the entity layer directly.

The Entity layer is responsible for holding the entities, asking the Component layer which components affect each entity, and telling the Engine layer which (not how) entities need to be updated on each frame.

The Component layer is responsible only for storing component information. It shares relevant component information with the Entity layer so that the Entity layer can determine which entities need to be updated. It also requires relevant user input for each entity, whichit gathers from the Entity layer. In order to perform that task, it is necessary for a communication linkor interface to exist between the Component layer and the Entity layer.

Results

In the current state of the simulation, all critical interactions are able to be performed by the student and verified by the simulation. The fundamental functionality has been completed and can be extended in future iterations of the project. All assets necessary for the hospital environment have also been acquired or developed, and may be further developed in the future by adding animations for the assets. As all critical project requirements were met and the system is extensible, the project is considered to be a success. Below is a demo video.