The ERAU Makerspace is a collaborative space for students, faculty, industries, and members of the local community to explore additive manufacturing, 3D scanning, and VR/AR. The purpose of this study ..
The ERAU Makerspace is a collaborative space for students, faculty, industries, and members of the local community to explore additive manufacturing, 3D scanning, and VR/AR. The purpose of this study is to learn how to best utilize VR/AR for engineering. We chose to do an embedded case study to analyze time and resource investments of each project. Our six cases are the project requests we have received from various clients as well as internal research and development projects. We feel these cases are insightful because they represent the current needs for VR/AR in university and industry settings. The three completed cases are a vehicle dynamics simulation which took two months, an architectural visualization program that took two weeks, and a flight simulator presentation for Northrop Grumman that took one month. The three ongoing cases are a VR teleoperated robotic arm, a 3D projector as a teaching aid for multivariable calculus, and an Android mobile application for the EGR 120 poster competition that will display an interactive AR CATIA representation. When the investigation is complete, educational institutions and industries will be able to utilize VR/AR platforms more efficiently as an engineering tool.
