pica-pica-cosmos

From the Classroom to the Cosmos: Expanding Educational Horizons with Cross-Reality Technology

Funder: Royal Society

Prior research has shown that, whilst online education is established, virtual reality (VR) education has potential, and STEAM education considered a progressive approach, there is and the SCENE Lab research on AI in VR at Durham (https://scene.webspace.durham.ac.uk/), our main research question is “What is the real-life potential of providing authentic cultural and learning experiences through STEAM education using virtual- (VR), augmented- (AR), extended- (XR), mixed- (MR) and cross-reality(CR) solutions (jointly called ‘∈CR’, i.e. subsets of CR) technology, what kind of skills can be nurtured, and what techniques, technologies and algorithms are needed?”. Following from this our primary objective is to propose, build and evaluate in real-life an art-based learning environment for virtual and extended (∈CR) reality for secondary and university education. The  secondary objective is cross-cultural collaboration and personalised feedback to enhance interactions between Japanese & UK pupils and teachers.

Research methods include a participative design methodology, involving users (teachers and learners) in all aspects of our framework construction and system design. An example novel technology to use is digital twins – i.e. a virtual representation that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process, to simulate VR objects or students across the Japanese-UK virtual space. We are expanding or creating the software and algorithms necessary to support the educational ∈CR experience, including 3D visualisation, adaptive interaction with digital and recognised real objects in the environment, automatic translation and artificial Intelligence (AI)-based recommendations.

PI: AI Cristea  

PI Japan: M. Kayama, Shinshu University

CoI: J. Wang, S. Concannon, C. Stewart

CoI Japan: S. Ogio, Univ. of Tokyo; T. Tomida, Shinshu University;  T. Nagai, T. Tachi, Institute of Technologists

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