This paper examines the integration of artificial intelligence and virtual reality to enhance agricultural training for individuals with special needs. The project addresses critical barriers in traditional farm education, including time constraints, high costs, and limited accessibility, particularly in the context of the USA’s growing reliance on imported food and the need for domestic agricultural development. To overcome these challenges, we developed an AI-powered virtual instructor within a Unity-based VR simulation of the NCAT poultry farm. This instructor, modeled as a digital twin of the actual farm head, interacts with users through natural language Q&A in both speech and text formats. The system leverages Mistral AI through Ollama for lightweight large language modeling, Microsoft Azure Speech Services for speech-to-text input, and Coqui TTS for text-to-speech output. Performance evaluations revealed a significant reduction in response latency from 30–40 s to 10–15 s by constraining the AI output length, ensuring smooth real-time interaction. The successful deployment of this system demonstrates the viability of AI-assisted immersive training, particularly for specially abled users, by removing barriers of scheduling, travel, and instructional cost while supporting scalable, inclusive agricultural education.

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An Immersive AI-Driven Virtual Reality Training for Accessible Agricultural Education in a Unity-Based VR Environment

  • Abhinav Pendem,
  • Bharath Jawahar,
  • Koundinya Challa,
  • Issa W. AlHmoud,
  • Balakrishna Gokaraju,
  • Chyi Lyi Liang

摘要

This paper examines the integration of artificial intelligence and virtual reality to enhance agricultural training for individuals with special needs. The project addresses critical barriers in traditional farm education, including time constraints, high costs, and limited accessibility, particularly in the context of the USA’s growing reliance on imported food and the need for domestic agricultural development. To overcome these challenges, we developed an AI-powered virtual instructor within a Unity-based VR simulation of the NCAT poultry farm. This instructor, modeled as a digital twin of the actual farm head, interacts with users through natural language Q&A in both speech and text formats. The system leverages Mistral AI through Ollama for lightweight large language modeling, Microsoft Azure Speech Services for speech-to-text input, and Coqui TTS for text-to-speech output. Performance evaluations revealed a significant reduction in response latency from 30–40 s to 10–15 s by constraining the AI output length, ensuring smooth real-time interaction. The successful deployment of this system demonstrates the viability of AI-assisted immersive training, particularly for specially abled users, by removing barriers of scheduling, travel, and instructional cost while supporting scalable, inclusive agricultural education.