Naviworks Consortium-National Police Agency Development
Proposal of ‘VR-based Stress Adaptation Training System’
Q&A with Professor Jo Seong-hwan of the Central Police Academy

The construction of a police virtual training system for effective response to frequent crimes such as unsolicited crimes is being promoted rapidly.

The project to build a testbed for complex terrorism response education and training based on extended reality (XR) that the Naviworks consortium is promoting for five years from 2021 to 2025 at the request of the National Police Agency is currently developing 12 scenarios based on Naviworks' advanced virtual training platform, VTB-X (Virtual Training Block).

At the '2023 International Security Industry Fair' held at Songdo Convensia in Incheon from the 18th to the 21st, Naviworks presented △Stress Acclimatization Training △Extended Reality (XR) Victim Status Investigation Scenarios implemented in a mobile vehicle training center.

The stress adaptation training system based on virtual reality (VR) is conducted under a scenario where four learners learn about the search and rescue of victims, search and track the perpetrator, subdue the perpetrator, and replace sudden situations in a situation where a man in his 40s suffers from delusions and is in a hydrochloric acid attack.

The learners wear stress measurement equipment such as a heart rate monitor on their wrists, and if their heart rate exceeds the standard during training, negative stress reactions such as a tunnel effect with a narrow field of vision are implemented on the screen. In order to bring out the realism of the scene, the hand-operated controller was eliminated and a hand tracking method was applied to directly track the hand's response. The intensity of stress stimulation can be adjusted in stages, making systematic desensitization training possible.

All of the learners' actions are scored to evaluate how well they maintain composure and cope in sudden situations and what areas require additional learning.

We met Professor Cho Seong-hwan of the Central Police Academy, who directly proposed the establishment of a stress adaptation training system to the National Police Agency, at the booth of the International Security Industry Fair and heard about the necessity of the project and its development direction.

Professor Cho Seong-hwan of the Central Police Academy is responding to an interview.

Q. I am curious about the purpose of proposing a virtualization-based stress adaptation training system.

A. The stress adaptation training system introduced this time is the result of systemizing the course taught at the Central Police Academy since last year into a virtual training system.

Sometimes, police officers face situations where they have to respond to murder, robbery, rape, stabbing, or death scenes where blood and flesh splatter and screams are rampant. Since police officers are also human, when they respond to a scene against a fleeing crowd, some people’s legs tremble, their vision narrows, their hearing becomes poor, or they experience short-term memory loss. Some even experience out-of-body experiences.

However, schools did not teach at all what kind of reactions should occur and how to deal with such extreme fear situations, and only taught techniques such as arrest and shooting. They only emphasized a sense of mission and taught, “If you don’t have the courage, go home.”

That is why I felt so guilty after the 2021 Incheon police stabbing scene incident. From then on, I thought that I had to teach how to deal with crisis situations in advance at school, and I started researching and planning training programs.

The stress adaptation training on the set involves trainees as ‘actors’. When the trainees’ heart rate increases in the extreme situation that is directed, they are repeatedly trained to control their breathing to lower their heart rate and widen their field of vision. However, it is difficult for one professor to control all of that, and it is also physically demanding.

However, if this training process is virtualized, it does not have to depend on the individual professor’s ability, and it can be repeated as many times as you want at a low cost.

Q. What are the achievements and regrets of the stress adaptation training virtualization?

A. The biggest achievement is probably the fact that this system has been created. This is because data is accumulated while using the solution for training, and a place has been created where the system can be improved through continuous tuning. It is also encouraging to link the heart rate to the field of vision to punish and reward, or to remove the controller held in the hand to increase the sense of realism.

However, for more effective training, not only sight but also screams and the smell of dead bodies should be realistically provided as stimulation to the five senses. It seems necessary to add dilemma stress situations such as victim protection and criminal arrest, augment reality (AR) so that actual walking, running, and moving can be done during training, and add communication functions between trainees.

Q. Is there anything you would like to add as a final remark?

A. The stress adaptation training content developed this time is scheduled to be built in the Central Police Academy Comprehensive Training Town, which will receive an investment of 43 billion won in 2026.

However, in order for police officers deployed to dispatch work to intuitively and calmly respond to fearful situations, a system must be built not only in large-scale training centers but also in actual small-scale offices, and continuous repetitive learning must be carried out.

Police officers are not robots, so they feel fear in extreme situations just the same. Nevertheless, I hope you know that we are making preemptive response efforts through these educational programs to overcome them and protect the lives and bodies of the people.

Source: 정보통신신문(http://www.koit.co.kr) 최아름기자