Tag: cave2

The Future is Here: The Holodeck Video Trainer

VIPE1A current obsession of military planners is keeping up with the latest in battlefield challenges while also dealing with troop reductions and tightened budgets. Video games are one solution, providing soldiers with  training that does not involve real munitions or loss of equipment. Unfortunately, most of these games do not provide a real-world immersive feel, coming as close to the real thing as possible while still being safe.

Hence why the the Army Contracting Command enlisted the help of Northrop Grumman this past January to integrate their Virtual Immersive Portable Environment (VIPE) “Holodeck” into the US Army’s training program. Much like the CAVE2, a VR platform created by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois, this latest holodeck is a step towards fully-realized VR environments.

VIPE_HolodeckUsing commercial, off-the-shelf hardware combined with gaming technology, the VIPE Holodeck virtual training system provides users with a 360 degree, high-fidelity immersive environment with a variety of mission-centric applications. It can support live, virtual and constructive simulation and training exercises including team training, cultural and language training and support for ground, air and remote platform training.

Last year, the VIPE Holodeck took first place in the Federal Virtual Challenge – an annual competition led by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Simulation and Training Technology Center – for the system’s Kinect integration navigation sensor, which gives users the ability to crawl, walk, run, stop, jump, and move side to side in the virtual environment.

?????????????????????????????????According to Northrop, the VIPE Holodeck moves ahead of other virtual simulators thanks to its advanced situational training, where service members can walk through an area in the replicated virtual environment and prepare for what they may encounter in real life. This works not only for infantry and target practice, but for vehicle drivers and police officers looking to simulate various situations they are likely to encounter.

To enhance that training, operators can drop threats into the environment, including IEDs and enemy shooters, as well as signals that should tip them off to potential threats and see how they respond before they actually find themselves in that situation. This sort of versatile, multi-situational complexity is precisely what the Army is looking for.

VIPE3Brig. Gen. Michael Lundy, deputy commanding general at the Army Combined Arms Center, said during the AUSA Aviation symposium earlier this month:

For us to be able to execute realistic training — good training — we have to be able to bring that operational environment [into the virtual world]. We want to get away from having multiple environments, virtual gaming and instruction, and go to one synthetic environment, get to a lower overhead and integrate the full operations process … according to the common operating picture.

But looking ahead, the applications for this type of technology are virtually (no pun!) limitless, never mind the fact that we are realizing something directly out of Star Trek. Northrop says it’s also exploring options for VIPE as a stepping stone to live-training within the medical field, as well as law enforcement and first responders for situations such as live-shooter or hostage scenarios.

ESO2Immersive virtual reality also figures quite prominently in NASA’s and other space agencies plans for future exploration. Given that manned missions are expensive, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous, mission planners are investigating Telexploration as a possible alternative. Here, orbiters and rovers would transmit visual information in real-time, while VR decks would be used to give the appearance of being on location.

As Ryan Frost, Northrop’s program manager for the VIPE Holodeck, put it:

The great thing about virtual reality and gaming technology [is that] it’s moving so rapidly that really it has endless possibilities that we can do. If you can think it, we can create it, eventually.

And be sure to check out this video from Northrop Grumman showing the VIPE Holodeck in action:


Sources: wired.com, northropgrumman.com

The Future is Here: The VR Cave!

Cave2It’s called the CAVE2, a next-generation virtual reality platform that is currently the most advanced visualization environment on Earth. Whereas other VR platforms are either in 2D or limited in terms of interactive capability, the CAVE2 is about the closest thing there is to a real-life holodeck. This is accomplished through a series of panoramic, floor-to-ceiling LCD displays and an optical tracking interface that is capable of rendering remarkably realistic 3D environments.

Developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, CAVE2 is a direct follow up to the VR platform the university created back in 1992. Like the original, the name stands for “Cave Automatic Virtual Environment”; but whereas its predecessor was set in a cube-shaped room, the new environment is set within a cylindrical, 320 degree immersive space. In addition, the screens, sounds, and resolution have all been vastly upgraded.

ModelFor example, the 7.5 by 2.5 meter space (24 feet x 8 feet) is covered floor-to-ceiling with 72 3D LCD screens, each of which outputs images at 37-megapixels (that’s 7,360 x 4,912 pixels, twice that of 2D). This allows for a pixel density that is on par with the human eye’s own angular resolution at 20/20 vision. Headgear is needed to get the full 3D effect, and the entire apparatus is controlled by a hand-held wand.

Yes, in addition to the holodeck, some other science fiction parallels are coming to mind right now. For example, there’s the gloved-controlled holographic interface from Minority Report, the high-tech nursery in Ray Bradbury’s short story The Veldt, and the parlor walls he envisioned in Fahrenheit 451. And apparently, this is no accident, since director Jason Leigh, the head of the project, is a major sci-fi geek!

mars_lifeBut of course, all this technology was designed with some real-life, practical applications in mind. These range from the exploration of outer space to the exploration of inner space, particularly the human body. As Ali Alaraj, a noted neuroscientist who used the CAVE2 put it:

“You can walk between the blood vessels. You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side. …That was science fiction for me. It’s fantastic to come to work. Every day is like getting to live a science fiction dream. To do science in this kind of environment is absolutely amazing.”

All of this bodes well for NASA’s plans for space exploration that would involve space probes, holographics, and avatars. It would also be incredibly awesome as far as individual hospitals were concerned. Henceforth, they could perform diagnostic surgery using nanoprobes which could detail a patients body, inch for inch, from the inside out.

And of course, the EVL has provided a cool video of the CAVE2 platform in action. Check them out:

Source: IO9, evl.uic.edu