Mixed Reality Fire Extinguisher-Simulator

Fire extinguishing is an essential skill in everyday life. The sudden outbreak of a fire can cause huge damage to the environment and even lead to fatalities. However, most people have never used a fire extinguisher in their whole lives, which can lead to wrong decisions in critical situations. Conventional fire extinguisher training aims to address this issue, but it requires significant organizational effort and financial costs. A promising alternative, by enabling repeatable, safe, and cost-efficient training scenarios, is offeredby Virtual Reality (VR).Existing VR simulators already simulate the structure of conventional training well,but most of them lack realism when it comes to physical feedback. Building on these approaches, this thesis developed a mixed reality (MR) fire extinguisher simulator that integrates a real, tracked fire extinguisher into the virtual environment and additionally enhances it with haptic feedback. Two major hardware constructions were implemented: a weight balance system to simulate mass loss during usage and a recoil simulation to represent the forces experienced while spraying.To closely resemble conventional training, three different scenarios were integrated: presentation, exercise, and test. Combined with simultaneous tracking of hands and controllers, and the implementation of basic fire extinguishing functionalities, the system provides an intuitive and immersive training experience.In an expert test and a user study with 29 participants, the application was evaluated and received great feedback regarding usability and training relevance through questionnaire answers. Although the system had limitations in terms of stress creation and realism, it demonstrates strong potential as a complementary addition to conventional fire extinguisher training.