Enhancing virtual-environment-based teamwork training with non-verbal communication

Virtual reality simulations for individual training of surgical skills are increasingly used in medical education and have been shown to improve patient outcome. Since recent research suggests that a large percentage of mistakes in clinical settings are due to problems with non-technical skills like communication, teamwork training simulators are developed and used to address this problem. Virtual-environment-based teamwork training simulators are very cost-efficient and allow for non-co-located settings, but have their limitations in communication among the participants. We present an inexpensive camera-based system for capturing aspects of non-verbal communication of participating users and projecting these onto the avatars in the simulation. This additional information has the potential of increasing the realism of the simulation and the effectiveness of team communication, resulting in a better training outcome – for all kinds of simulation that involves human communication