The digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland is collaborating with the University of Glasgow in a six-month project. And this is funded by Innovate UK.
Running until October 2021, the project called Super-immersive remote working via virtual reality-controlled robotics (‘Superior’), explores extending the capability of eCom’s virtual reality (VR) authoring tool, eNetReality, to enable users to control a physical, robotic arm from within a VR environment. This ground-breaking project has already attracted interest from a number of universities from around the world such as in the USA, China and the Middle East.
The solution will provide remote access to specialized equipment. Wendy Edie, eCom’s Managing Director said that notably, the project aims to enable learners to build electronic circuits within a virtual world which, in the real world, will operate a robotic arm supplied by the University of Glasgow. This project will provide support for Haptics. Wendy added that the impact of Covid19 has driven the need for this development, with the academic sector having the greatest need at present. But still with the growth in robotic automation in industry, they would expect to see a strong growth in demand from the commercial sector for this type of training. In the short term, the University of Glasgow and eCom hope that developing this concept will support students who’ve been unable to attend their robotics labs because of the Covid restrictions. In addition, this immersive model for remote Robotics training – providing users with a so-called ‘super-immersive’ experience. And this should enable students to complete their work remotely. Dr Guodong Zhao, Principal Investigator at the University of Glasgow said that they are very happy to work with the leading VR company, eCom, on this Innovate UK project. Now they can exploit the potentials of VR, robotics, and communications in future remote working.
