Lifeguard VR

In the USA, more children ages 1–4 die from drowning than any other cause. Together with Lucid Reality Labs, the American Red Cross developed a unique VR solution to train lifeguards. Quick recognition and response can mean the difference between life and death, and the lifeguards should be able to respond to a distressed swimmer or drowning person within 30 seconds. The pool environments with the highest visual fidelity, sounds, shadows, and hyper-realistic avatars are developed with aquatic experts to create a science-based yet hands-on solution involving cognitive skills such as surveillance and visual scanning to identify a drowning person. As many critical components of lifeguard training are not replicable in a traditional training environment, VR resolves this challenge. The system allows the processing of users’ performance scores to encourage competition, providing an engaging training experience tailored to the young lifeguard demographic.

The American Red Cross offers lifeguard training and defines this program as one of its flagship activities regarding training programs. The Lifeguard VR solution has a meaningful social impact by addressing the immense challenge of children drawing and teaching the skills that may prevent such tragic statistics. Lifeguard VR will be free to download and available to all Red Cross Learning Center Customers. Lifeguard facility directors will be able to track the progress and identify gaps in their lifeguard’s scanning technique within the accompanying web admin panel to the Lifeguard VR app. Facility directors and lifeguard trainers will be able to visualize the progress of their trainees as they move through the lifeguard curriculum and practice proper scanning techniques. Thus, studies on the effectiveness of scanning techniques that were not possible before Lifeguard VR will now be able to be conducted to measure the impact of the app within the lifeguarding industry.