Virtual reality lab offers exciting research opportunities
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A student demonstrates a motion capture suit at the University's recent Open Day. |
A fully-equipped Virtual Reality Lab is opening up postgrad research opportunities in a wide variety of areas, from computer games to police training and medicine.
The VR Lab was first established by Macquarie's Department of Computing in 2003 following the awarding of a major equipment grant. Since then, the facility has been greatly improved as more than $1million in new grants has flowed in for a variety of new research projects.
"We've received three Australian Research Council grants since I came here, focusing on interactive drama, speech recognition in computer games, and training simulations for police officers," says Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, Dr Manolya Kavakli. "We've also had five internal grants which have really helped a lot, including one on virtual sculpting for face reconstruction and another using biometrics for gait analysis and recognition."
New gadgets
Some of the new technology used in the Lab include face- and head-tracking equipment, a motion capture suit, data gloves and the state-of-the-art CAVE system.
"Using a virtual reality engine we are able to create virtual worlds which are projected onto a semi-cylindrical, 160-degree projection screen, which is six metres wide. It's curved and gives you the feeling of immersion, like you are in a cave," Kavakli explains.
"So far we've been able to use the head-tracker to track the positions of people inside the cave and also use the integrated data gloves with the system, so you can navigate the environment by using your hands - a little bit like in the movie Minority Report," she says. "You navigate and control your speed by opening your fingers and bending them and so on. The next step is for us to integrate the motion capture suit with the CAVE system."
Diversity of research interests
Kavakli says the applications of virtual reality are limited only by your imagination.
"Currently we have postgrad students with interests in medical science, robotics, computer games, psychology and multimedia," she says. "You can use virtual reality for various things. We have a focus on training simulations mainly, but there are also VR applications for animators, forensic artists or virtual sculptors in the fine arts as well.
"We're currently building a robotics wheelchair able to be operated by spinal-injured patients, and we train them as well by using virtual reality. Training simulations can address many different things - application areas are endless."
The number of researchers using the VR Lab is impressive given its short history.
"When I first came here there was just one person working on graphics and he then switched back to another field, so we started from scratch," Kavakli says. "Now we've got 30 people in our research group from various areas - around 10 academics, 10 PhD students from various areas and backgrounds, international students mostly, and another 10 research associates supporting us as well, so it's quite an inter-disciplinary area."
For more information, contact Dr Manolya Kavakli at manolya.kavakli@mq.edu.au or visit www.comp.mq.edu.au/~isvr/