Virtual Energy Center for Teaching Alternative Energy Technologies Christoph W. Borst* Kenneth A. Ritter III Terrence L. Chambers University of Louisiana at Lafayette University of Louisiana at Lafayette University of Louisiana at Lafayette ABSTRACT We overview the Virtual Energy Center, a VR environment that models a real energy facility to enable virtual field trips and self- guided exploration. Our goal is to take advantage of emerging low-cost hardware and improved networks to provide students who cannot travel to the real facility with alternatives that provide comparable educational benefit. The virtual facility is augmented by visual guides and educational content to teach students about concentrating solar power technology. A teacher physically near the student can appear in the scene via depth camera imagery, allowing the teacher to walk around in a classroom setting and assist students. Additionally, work-in-progress is streaming the depth images over a network to allow students to virtually meet expert guides from the real facility. We summarize these features, some interaction-related challenges, and ongoing testing. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Education, Alternative Energy Index Terms: H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems: Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities 1 INTRODUCTION The Solar Technology Applied Research and Testing (START) Laboratory, shown in Fig. 1, is a pilot-scale solar thermal power plant that is the first university-owned facility of its type and size in the United States [1]. It supports research on next-generation solar devices and outreach activities to educate K-12 students about solar energy and other forms of renewable energy. Physical tours provide limited opportunities for educational experiences, because it is difficult for many students to travel to START due to geographical or scheduling constraints. For broader delivery of educational experiences, we developed the Virtual Energy Center (VEC), also shown in Fig. 1. Ritter and Chambers [2] described the initial creation of a scale model of the real energy facility for guided virtual tours to groups of students visiting a projection display room. Emerging low-cost VR devices will enable broad deployment of VR experiences to homes or schools. We expect such technologies are promising for education and training related to alternative energy technologies at START. Increased motivation and engagement can result from immersive and interactive VR experiences and are fundamental to effective instruction [3][4]. We believe the first-person immersive view will also provide students with a better understanding of size and spatial arrangements of energy device components. We extended the VEC to support consumer VR devices and to include self-guided educational content. We summarize this extended VEC, some related interaction challenges, and our collaboration with local educators for assessing results. Figure 1: Bird’s-eye view of the real (left) and virtual (right) facility. 2 ENVIRONMENT OVERVIEW The VEC is rendered and scripted in the Unity game engine. It currently uses the Oculus Rift DK2 for immersive visuals and head tracking, Razer Hydra tracked wands for pointing-type interactions and other inputs, and a second-generation Microsoft Kinect as a depth camera to capture a teacher or guide. 2.1 Station Example Students move through the VEC to visit several interactive stations. The first station provides an overview map and introductory explanations of both the facility and interaction methods. Other stations provide content related to the nearby plant components. For example, students visit a power block including a model of a heat exchanger (Fig. 2). There, they learn how heated fluid arrives from the solar array, how this heats and vaporizes refrigerant by heat exchange, and how the resulting pressure drives a generator through a twin screw expander. Interactive elements include voice recordings indicated and triggered by icons that appear in a constrained order, valves that are manipulated to control the flow of fluids, particle systems to show the associated fluid flows, and an animated exploded view that shows the internal structure of the exchanger (especially a row of metal plates). Small billboards can display additional technical illustrations or photos of the real device. Before a student moves to the next station, the educational module can ask the student to answer quiz questions by pointing to answers or objects. 2.2 Navigation In a classroom setting, students remain seated for practical and safety reasons, and VR visuals should be comfortable for a wide range of users. We place intentional constraints on virtual player motion, both to provide some control over viewpoint and to reduce mismatches between real and virtual user motion. At each VEC station, the player’s view is that of standing on a small platform with handrails. Platform location and height are set to provide the clearest view of the presented educational content. The viewpoint changes according to tracked head motion, which is naturally constrained for seated classroom users. Larger virtual motion (travel) occurs only when students move to the next station after completing a station’s activities. Finding and moving to the next station may help reinforce students’ understanding of overall size and spatial arrangement of the energy devices. One basic travel method is joystick-based control of head-forward translation and left/right rotation. In early *cborst@cacs.louisiana.edu This is an author-formatted version. © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. 10.1109/VR.2016.7504701