Is this the real life? Virtual simulation and its role in understanding vulnerable road user safety
CME Department Seminar
January 31, 2025
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM America/Chicago
Presenter: Austin Valentine Angulo, PhD, SUNY University at Buffalo
Location: ERF Room 1047 or on Zoom at https://uic.zoom.us/j/87615571365?pwd=zvAs20EJOSaI0hXYW4LFM8leNUXUex.1
Meeting ID: 876 1557 1365
Passcode: cme@2025
Abstract: Developing low-cost, low-risk methodologies for understanding road user behavior, safety, and perception has been an aspiration within the field of transportation for decades. Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) provide the framework for conducting human factors experimentation without the limitations of real-world experimentation and simulation; however, the development of fully immersive, realistic, and interactive simulations has been limited by what the technology of the time is capable of. Development of IVEs and the technology used to construct and interact with them has gone through many iterations and many lessons have been learned along the way. Recently, the field of virtual simulation has seen as dramatic 'boom' with the introduction of commercially available alternative reality technologies (virtual, mixed, and augmented), providing the platform for which many developers can design, build, and collaborate. In this talk, Dr. Angulo will discuss the history of virtual simulation pertaining to road users, research being conducted within the Transportation Research and Visualization Laboratory at SUNY UB using IVEs, and the limitations we still face in developing virtual simulations.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Austin V. Angulo is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at University at Buffalo (UB). His research interests include CAV technologies, vulnerable road user safety, micromobility, human factors in transportation, virtual reality simulation and transportation sustainability and equity. At UB, Angulo founded the Transportation Research and Visualization Laboratory (TRAVL), a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the research, training, and education of human interaction with transportation infrastructure using naturalistic and immersive virtual simulation methodologies. Angulo received his PhD from the University of Virginia where he founded the Omni-Reality and Cognition Laboratory and was a Dwight David Eisenhower Fellow at the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center. He is a committee member of the TRB Standing Committee on Road User Measurement and Evaluation (ACH50).
Date posted
Jan 27, 2025
Date updated
Jan 27, 2025