RESEARCH
Photo: Rikkert Harink Text: Michaela Nesvarova
VIRTUAL REALITY
‘MAKE THE WORLD AS YOU LIKE IT' FOR MOST OF US, THE TERM VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) SPARKS EXCITEMENT. WHILE THE USE OF VR FOR ENTERTAINMENT HAS SURELY FOUND ITS PLACE IN OUR WORLD, THE TECHNOLOGY HAS MUCH LARGER POTENTIAL: FOR TRAINING, THERAPY AND RESEARCH. MANY SCIENTISTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE ARE EXPLORING THESE SERIOUS APPLICATIONS. IN THEIR HANDS, VR BECOMES A TOOL TO OVERCOME ADDICTION, TO CONDUCT EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH IN CRIMINOLOGY AND TO TREAT PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS.
E
xperts at the UT use virtual reality for a wide range of projects, but they all agree on one thing: VR should never be the goal in itself. It should be a useful tool. For the user, it should be a way to visualize and fully grasp the consequences of their decisions. To experts, including scientists and therapists, it can offer something unavailable before: a chance to directly observe (and consequently shape) people’s behavior in a controlled and safe setting. VIRTUAL BURGLARY This opens up a world of possibilities, believes researcher Iris van Sintemaartensdijk. ‘Experimental research in criminology was not possible before VR,’ says the PhD candidate involved in the Virtual Burglary Project. ‘I’m a psychologist with focus on criminology. I study how guardianship, meaning presence of people, influences burglars. Until now, we could search for patterns, such as which houses are targeted. We could also interview the burglars and ask what they did and why. However, they are not always completely truthful and our memory is also not perfect. VR now gives us the opportunity to bypass these issues. We can directly observe the burglars’ behavior and be in full control of the experiment.’
25 Because of that, Van Sintemaartensdijk has spent a lot of time in prisons across the Netherlands. She has worked with 181 convicted burglars, all of whom have completed an experiment using a special VR application developed for the project. ‘We have created two virtual neighborhoods and asked the burglars to scout the area as if they wanted to burglar a house. We could then observe their behavior, see exactly where and when they stop, where and how they walk and so on.’
‘We ask burglars to scout the area as if they wanted to burglar a house’
05 • 2020