{"id":480,"date":"2016-10-26T22:39:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T03:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovery.wisc.edu\/vr2016\/?p=480"},"modified":"2016-11-27T17:26:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T22:26:24","slug":"project-group-the-moral-coders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.discovery.wisc.edu\/vr2016\/2016\/10\/26\/project-group-the-moral-coders\/","title":{"rendered":"Project group: The Moral Coders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Team Name: <\/b>The Moral Coders<\/span><\/p>\n

Your group members: <\/b>Frank Thompson, Tony Karola, Caroline Close,\u00a0Galen Erickson
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A description of what you want to do
\n<\/b>We are looking to test people\u2019s responses to ethical dilemmas. \u00a0Specifically we are looking to create a variation of the trolley problem. \u00a0Since the original trolley problem doesn’t present a situation modern people are likely to encounter, we want to try to vary the setup so that the thought experiment hits closer to our everyday experiences. \u00a0Time and resources permitting, we would like to see people\u2019s reactions to multiple scenarios including those that vary features of the victims such as race, age, or gender to see what changes (if any) these factors incur.<\/span><\/p>\n

The user will be placed in front of some simple (likely binary) decision making device, like a lever, steering wheel, etc. They will then be presented with the various ethical dilemmas (e.g. <\/span>https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trolley_problem<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>http:\/\/moralmachine.mit.edu\/<\/span><\/a>), possibly with a time constraint, and will be tasked with using this device to make a decision. Almost all choices will result in deaths of some innocent (virtual) people, and we will record data determining the user\u2019s implicit moral priorities (utilitarian, certain ethnicities over others, a gender or age priority, responsibility aversion, destructive hedonism, etc), as well as possibly survey participants on their decisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Concept art
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

\"image00\"\"image01\"<\/p>\n

What equipment you plan to use; what equipment we don\u2019t have
\n<\/b>We don\u2019t have any equipment; we plan to use any head mounted VR system + an input device (HTC Vive).<\/span><\/p>\n

A description of what you think you know how to do (as a group)
\n<\/b>Tony<\/b> – I am an experienced programmer + some experience with computer graphic
\n<\/span>Frank<\/b> – I\u2019ve dabbled with Unity a bit in the past + some experience with programming, I\u2019m reasonably familiar with ethics studies.
\nCaroline<\/strong> – I have experience a little experience with programming. I am really familiar with ethics studies and creating experiments.
\nGalen<\/strong> – I\u2019ve done a significant amount of modeling with solidworks so I should be helpful when creating models for the simulation. I\u2019ve got programming experience as well as some experience developing a UI.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A description of things you are less sure you know how to do (as a group)
\n<\/b>Tony<\/b> – I don\u2019t have any experience with creating content for VR
\n<\/span>Frank<\/b> – No experience with CG
\nCaroline<\/strong> – I don\u2019t have any experience with programming in VR.
\nGalen<\/strong> – The biggest challenge will likely be bringing everything together in Unity. We all have some experience with the individual aspects of creating a simulation but none with tieing it all together.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

What are your first steps?<\/b><\/p>\n