Wayfinding through VR

Use VR walkthrough for wayfinding research. Players’ routes, and walking behavior, such as head movement, are captured and evaluated.

Credit: restaurant designed by Eian Bennett.
More info on the wayfinding and Egress at the simulated DAAP building can be found here.

 

Cloud-based Digital Twin

Clients are one click away from interacting with a Digital Twin model on their personal devices. No installation is required.

Demonstration of XR-Lab’s project on cloud-based Digital Twin(DT), accessible through mobile devices. Multiple users can interact with a complicated DT model through touch screens. Clients do not need to install apps and can access the content with a simple URL and web browser via personal IOS or Android mobile devices and tablets. Photorealistic renderings are streamed to clients with high-frame-rate. Also, our DT model integrates Building Information Modeling, Metadata, IOT sensor data, 360 image/video, and web3D content.

More information on Future of Work: Understanding the interrelationships between humans and technology to improve the quality of work-life in smart buildings.

Industry 4.0/5.0 grant

 

Immersive vs. Traditional Training​ – a comparison of training modalities​

PIs: Tamara Lorenz, Ming Tang

  • Dr. Tamara Lorenz. Associate Professor. Embodied Interactive Systems Lab, Industry 4.0 & 5.0 Institute (I45I), Center for Cognition, Action, and Perception (CAP)
  • Ming Tang. Associate Professor. Extended Reality Lab, Industry 4.0 & 5.0 Institute (I45I), Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS)

Consortium Research Project: evaluate the effectiveness of an immersive training protocol against different traditional training modalities. 

Grant. $40,000. By UC Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute 01.2023-01.2024

Open Questions

  • Is immersive training equally as effective or better than traditional training? 
  • Is immersive training beneficial for specific types of training (skill, behavior), while other modalities are better for other types (e.g. knowledge acquisition)?
  • Does the benefit of immersive VR training warrant the initial investment in equipment and subsequent investment in project building, running, and sustenance?

Proposal

  • Evaluation of the effectiveness of an immersive training protocol against different traditional training modalities. 
  • Evaluation of modality-dependent benefits for different learning goals. 
  • Derivation of assessment metrics for VR training against other training modalities. 

Training scenario: DAAP Fire Evacuation

traditional training with slides and maps.

VR training with an immersive and interactive experience.

 

 

Thanks to the Institute’s Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) and industry patrons, including Siemens, Kinetic Vision, John Deere, Stress Engineering Services, Innovative Numberics, and Ethicon. 

Next Phase experiments

Multi-player test



 

At UC News

New UC institute looks ahead to ‘Industry 5.0’. UC will harness collective talent across campus to help companies solve new challenges. by Michael Miller.  December 8, 2022

 

 

Therapeutic Crisis Intervention Simulation

VR-based Employee Safety Training. Therapeutic Crisis Intervention Simulation 

Grant:

  1. Virtual Reality for Employee Safety Training. Phase I. Sponsored research by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. PI. Ming Tang. $16,631. Period: 6.2022- 09.2022.
  2. Virtual Reality for Employee Safety Training.Therapeutic Crisis Intervention Simulation-Phase II.  Sponsored research by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. PI. Tang. $22,365. Period: 2.2023- 12.2023.

Led by Ming Tang, the XR-Lab is working with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) to investigate a VR-based simulation for employee safety training. A virtual hospital with A.I-controlled characters will be created to research various scenarios during the therapeutic crisis intervention.

Team:

  • Ming Tang, Nancy Daraiseh, Maurizio Macaluso, Krista Keehn, Harley Davis, Aaron Vaughn, Katheryn Haller,  Joseph Staneck, Emily Oehler
  • Employee Safety Learning Lab, CCHMC
  • Extended Reality (XR) Lab, UC

Field of research: Virtual Reality, Safety Training, Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, Mental Health,  Human Behavior Simulation

screenshots from Quest 2 headset.

 

upcoming book: Architecture Design in the Age of Extended Reality

Handbook for Metaverse, Digital Twin, and Virtual Reality Development

As the director of the Extended Reality Lab at UC, I am thrilled to report that I signed a publication contract with Routledge on an authored book titled  “Architecture Design in the Age of Extended Reality, the handbook for Metaverse, Digital Twin, and Virtual Reality development”. The book includes 17 chapters covering the topics of XR in Architecture, development process from modeling, material, lighting, project management, interaction design, user interface design, character, animation, node-based programming, digital twin, project showcases,  virtual reality, mixed reality and augmented reality development and data analysis for VR-based evaluation. Routledge will publish the book in 2023.

Cheers.

 

Author:  Ming Tang, Adam Sambuco.  Publisher: Routledge. Publishing time: 2023

The book contains learning material and real project examples from Ming Tang’s XR studio courses taught at UC. Please check out another book by Ming Tang on Parametric Building Design, also published by Routledge.