GIST Student Team Launches VR-Based Urban Forest Bathing Walking Simulation Platform Development

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Gwan-woo] Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) announced on the 23rd that a student team led by Yeo Dohyun, a doctoral student in the Convergence Technology Interdisciplinary Department, has been selected as the lead institution for the project "Development of a Virtual Reality-Based 4D Simulator for Urban Forest Bathing and Study of Its Physiological Effects" under the Korea Forestry Promotion Institute's Forest Convergence Specialized Workforce Training Project (R&D).

The student team will receive 20 million KRW in funding over the next year to develop a virtual reality-based 4D walking simulation platform and plans to develop technology supporting urban forest bathing by comparing and analyzing physiological effects with actual forest bathing.

The team, including doctoral students Kim Kwangbin and Lee Ji-eun and integrated course student Oh Jungseok from the same lab, will build a VR-based multimodal 4D walking simulation platform for urban forest bathing and verify its physiological effects through comparison and analysis with real forest bathing.

Although forest bathing has emotional stabilization effects such as reducing depression and stress and immune enhancement effects due to phytoncides, accessibility is limited due to the lack of green spaces in urban areas, making it difficult for modern people to comfortably enjoy forest healing and recreation in daily life.

Accordingly, the student team aimed to enable urban forest bathing through virtual reality technology and verify its physiological effects to improve accessibility to forest healing and recreational activities.

To this end, they developed urban forest bathing scenarios including various situational and environmental factors through prior research and analysis of actual environmental elements. To enhance immersion and realism, they built a motion-sensory 4D multimodal (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory) virtual reality platform and developed a sensor hybrid analysis tool to verify the physiological effects of virtual reality-based forest bathing by comparison and analysis with real forest bathing.

Project leader Yeo Dohyun said, "Research on urban forest experience technology through an indoor VR-based multimodal 4D forest bathing platform and its physiological effects is an unprecedented and original study," adding, "It is expected to contribute to relieving modern people's stress by increasing accessibility to forest bathing and creating an environment where it can be easily enjoyed in everyday urban spaces such as living rooms and offices."

Yeo Dohyun conducts research in virtual reality and human-computer interaction in the "Human-Centered Intelligent Systems Laboratory" led by Professor Kim Seungjun. He has been highly evaluated for his excellent research capabilities, including first-author papers published in top conferences such as the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (ACM CHI) and the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (IEEE ISMAR), as well as domestic and international patent applications related to mixed reality technology.