Towards an Emotion-Aware Metaverse: A Human-Centric Shipboard Fire Drill Simulator

Traditional XR and Metaverse applications prioritize user experience (UX) for adoption and success but often overlook a crucial aspect of user interaction: emotions. This article addresses this gap by presenting an emotion-aware Metaverse application: a Virtual Reality (VR) fire drill simulator designed to prepare crews for shipboard emergencies. The simulator detects emotions in real time, assessing trainees responses under stress to improve learning outcomes. Its architecture incorporates eye-tracking and facial expression analysis via Meta Quest Pro headsets. The system features four levels whose difficulty is increased progressively to evaluate user decision-making and emotional resilience. The system was evaluated in two experimental phases. The first phase identified challenges, such as navigation issues and lack of visual guidance. These insights led to an improved second version with a better user interface, visual cues and a real-time task tracker. Performance metrics like completion times, task efficiency and emotional responses were analyzed. The obtained results show that trainees with prior VR or gaming experience navigated the scenarios more efficiently. Moreover, the addition of task-tracking visuals and navigation guidance significantly improved user performance, reducing task completion times between 14.18\% and 32.72\%. Emotional responses were captured, revealing that some participants were engaged, while others acted indifferently, indicating the need for more immersive elements. Overall, this article provides useful guidelines for creating the next generation of emotion-aware Metaverse applications.