VR-WISE: VR Based Work Zone Immersive Simulation With Eye Tracking and Biometric Sensors for Capturing Driver’s Awareness

Safety in roadway work zones remains a major challenge: accidents often stem from unpredictable driver and worker behavior, underscoring the need to understand their interactions and perceptions. Advances in virtual reality and high-fidelity simulators like CARLA enable studying behaviors in risky scenarios without real-world risk. This paper introduces VR-WISE, a VR-based driving simulation platform that captures rich driver behavior data in work zones through full-scene customization, animated roadway workers, and integrated eye-tracking and biometric sensors. VR-WISE supports rapid generation of diverse work-zone scenarios and detailed multimodal data collection to analyze driver perceptions and responses to dynamic roadside activities. A user study across three scenarios demonstrates the platform’s effectiveness. Driver perception was evaluated using gaze metrics (e.g., duration and fixation ratios) and physiological signals (heart rate and electrodermal activity), providing a comprehensive understanding of attention in complex work-zone environments.