This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)
This award will fund the acquisition of a PowerWall-Based Virtual Reality (VR) system to enable the research and teaching in virtual prototyping at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). The VR system will be capable of providing life-size 3-D visualization of virtual object enhanced by nonvisual display modalities, such as haptic feedback and motion tracker. The major component of the VR system is the PowerWall which is a flat, large-scale (10 ft by 7.5 ft) stereoscopic visualization system.
Conventional virtual prototyping techniques face the challenges of revealing the depth information and the spatially complex structures of a virtual prototype due to the limitation of two-dimensional computer interface. The proposed VR system will offer considerable benefits for researches in Virtual Prototyping by: enabling an immersive understanding of a life-size 3-D virtual product; revealing the spatially complex structures of a virtual prototype; and creating a virtual environment which is not possible within physical experimental setting. The PowerWall VR system will be utilized in four core research projects and three secondary research projects. The core research projects that will be enabled by the VR facility are: (1) Development of virtual sculpting system; (2) Heterogeneous material modeling; (3) Avatars? impact on people?s behavior; and (4) Molecular modeling of the ligand interaction. The secondary research projects include: (1) Design optimization for propulsion components; (2) Development of carbon Nanotubes composites; and (3) Robust control of flexible arm robot. The VR system will also be integrated in the graduate and undergraduate curricula in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science.
The acquisition of the PowerWall system is expected to have significant impact on research, education and infrastructure building at PVAMU, a Historically Black Colleges and University. The equipment will have a direct impact on six faculty members in three disciplines involved in researches, including Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Chemistry. The infrastructure will have profound impact on students at PVAMU, most of whom are from underrepresented groups. Approximately 175 undergraduate and graduate students will be affected by the research training and courses. The facilities and the related projects will be demonstrated to women students and K-12 students through summer programs, such as Engineering and Science Concepts Institute (ESCI), STEM PREP CAMPS program, Minority Introduction to Engineering program (MITE), etc. The research results will be disseminated via journal publications and conference presentations.
