Enhancing the college and university physical education teaching and learning experience using virtual reality and particle swarm optimization

• Published in: Soft computing (Berlin, Germany) Germany), 2024, Vol.28 (2), p.1277-1294
• Main Authors: Wang, Jian, Yang, Yulin, Liu, Haiyang, Jiang, Lizhu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computational Intelligence; Control; Engineering; Mathematical Logic and Foundations; Mechatronics; Optimization; Robotics
• ISSN: 1432-7643; 1433-7479
• DOI: 10.1007/s00500-023-09528-4

Physical education is experiencing a significant transformation due to cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), virtual reality (VR), and optimization strategies. The traditional physical education classes offered by universities and colleges no longer meet the needs of modern society in terms of teaching, research, and evaluation. To address this issue, we utilized VR and ML to create a physical learning environment for university and college students. This environment allowed them to practice in a virtual setting while also learning new exercise routines. We established an immersive physical activity setting equipped with Kinect technology and VR-ready computers to create an interactive and engaging VR experience. For this, we proposed a layered architecture that includes a presentation layer, business layer, application service layer, data layer, and hardware layer. The Kinect technology is placed at the hardware layer, the database is designed and placed at the data layer, and the user interface is designed and placed at the presentation layer. The business layer is made up of support vector machine (SVM) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) which accurately classify and evaluate students’ performance in a range of physical activities on the basis of interactive and immersive VR content generated by the hardware layer. Through experimental verification, this study provides a complete framework for modernizing physical education in universities and colleges, exploring the integration of VR and optimization methodologies. The proposed method can effectively stimulate the enthusiasm of college students to learn sports, improve athletic performance and learning efficiency, as well as the overall quality of physical education instruction.