The First Large-Scale System for Human Subjects XR Research
Supported by five collaborative grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA) project is developing a human-machine system for carrying out human subjects research related to extended reality (XR), including Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, for the XR researcher community. It seeks to achieve unprecedented scale, speed, and control over experiments. The project also seeks to foster a broad and collaborative community of XR researchers to increase the opportunities for research partnerships and professional growth.
Mission
To serve the community of XR researchers by providing tools to accelerate and improve the quality of their human subjects research, building and sustaining a broad and collaborative community of XR researchers, fostering the development of the current and next generation of XR researchers.
VERA Platform Features
The VERA platform is comprised of two components that work together to enable distributed, remote data collection for VR experiments: a web portal and a Unity plug-in. Both components are coming soon, so stay tuned!
VERA WEB PORTAL
The VERA web portal provides a centralized dashboard with the following features:
- Experiment Creation: Define experimental conditions and dependent variables
- Experiment Management: Add collaborators to experiment repository with different permissions
- Data Management: View and download participant experiment data in real-time and after experiment completion
- Survey Creation: Choose from a variety of common survey templates (SSQ, NASA-TLX, etc.), or create your own survey that can be displayed within the experiment virtual environment
- Integrations: Integrate with third-party tools for administering questionnaires and recruit participants
VERA UNITY PLUG-IN
The VERA Unity plug-in provides automatic linking of the user’s Unity project to their VERA web portal account, which enables the following features within the user’s Unity project and coding environment:
- Experiment Development Tools: Framework for advancing participants through experiment workflow (trials, conditions, etc.), populated with user-defined experiment conditions
- Survey Tools: Display user-defined interactable questionnaires to participants during the experiment
- Data Recording Tools: Automatically log metrics to the VERA web portal
- Build Tools: automatically convert project to WebXR, deploy the experiment software to VERA web portal, and generate an experiment link for sharing through participant recruitment platforms
VERA Leadership
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Greg Welch (Lead PI), University of Central Florida
Shiri Azenkot, Cornell Tech / XR Access
Jeremy Bailenson (Director of Community Outreach), Stanford University
Gerd Bruder, University of Central Florida
John Murray (Director of Software Engineering), University of Central Florida
Tabitha Peck, Davidson College
Valerie Jones Taylor, Rutgers University
INVESTIGATORS
Jonathan Beever (Ethics and Privacy), University of Central Florida
Nicholas Alvaro Coles (Big Team Science), University of Florida
Carolyn Cruz-Neira (Partnerships, Sustainability), University of Central Florida
Rui Xie (Statistics and Data Science), University of Central Florida
DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS
Ali Haskins Lisle, Director of Development and Operations, University of Central Florida
John Murray, Director of Software Engineering, University of Central Florida
Chloe Beato, Development Project Manager, University of Central Florida
Dylan Fox, XR Access Director of Operations, Cornell Tech / XR Access
Jaz DeGuzman, Pre-Release Experiment Coordinator, University of Central Florida
Matthew Gottsacker, Business Development Coordinator, University of Central Florida
VERA Partner Institutions
Additional Personnel
Additional Support
Ryan Schubert, Special Projects Coordinator, University of Central Florida
Community Committees
Outreach and Engagement
Chaired by Jeremy Bailenson, focuses on community involvement and building/growing a broad, collaborative, and vibrant community of XR researchers.
Ethics and Privacy
Chaired by Jonathan Beever, focuses on potential ethical concerns related to engagement, research participation and data reuse, and platform design.
Participant and Researcher
Chaired by Valerie Jones Taylor, Tabitha Peck, and Dylan Fox, focuses on all matters related to the Participant Pool and the Researchers who use VERA, including user experience, access, financial matters, Institutional Review Boards (IRB) matters, and experiments including vulnerable populations such as children or the elderly.
Systems and Operations
Chaired by Gerd Bruder and John Murray, focuses on development and operations of VERA systems, services, and tools.
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