A Scalable VR-Based System to assess Driving-Related Abilities in People with Disability

Driving independently plays a crucial role for people with disability as it allows for social participation and autonomy in daily life. However, the safety of the driver him/herself, the other drivers, and pedestrians must be ensured. This paper presents VRoADS, a Virtual Reality (VR)-based tool to support assessors while evaluating the driving-related abilities of people with disability who want to (re)obtain a driving license. VRoADS allows the evaluation of the same driving-related abilities that are generally assessed before the release of the “special driving license” using standard equipment named Residual Capabilities Verifier (RCV). Although valid, this tool lacks realism and is only available in a few specialized centers on the Italian territory. VRoADS aims to fill these gaps by providing a driving-contextualized scenario and the possibility of being operated with different input controls: this would allow its use with simplified and cost-effective hardware setups that can be made available in smaller centers too. Before use, VRoADS must be validated with different hardware setups to assess whether its measures are comparable to those obtained with the RCV.