Performance evaluation of AR/VR training technologies for EMS first responders

The first responder training sector presents crucial difficulties on adopting “future of work” online training principles because physical (muscle) memory is considered as important as cognitive memory. It is obvious that physical memory cannot be obtained by existing screen- and paper-based trainings. This paper presents a novel training framework for first responders that leverages augmented reality and virtual reality technologies. The framework incorporates novel design thinking processes that are implemented for the design of the training experiences. In addition, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of various metrics such as performance, time on task, accuracy and learning rate are developed to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed framework. A special use case of the emergency medical services called the ambulance bus is investigated and it is shown that the proposed training methodology improved the accuracy of the first responders by a factor of 46% and the speed on executing tasks by 29%.