For over ten years, THWS has been exploring virtual and augmented realities in its THWS-internal VR lab. To keep up with the technological progress of the last years, the MAVEL Lab is supposed to set new standards as the innovational multi-sensorial lab. The potential applications are virtually unlimited.
An employee hands a man dressed in a white shirt and jacket the virtual reality (VR) glasses and the controllers. Just a few moments later, the man explores the "Ritterkapelle" (knight chapel) in Haßfurt in a virtual reality. He slowly turns around himself, bending his head right, then left, his mouth slightly opened in awe. Just a few metres next to him, a second man is wearing similar glasses, pushing buttons with his fingers, who seems to be interacting with different objects in the virtual space. The large, almost cubical lab is filled with visitors exploring virtual realities or discussing them. Where the two men are now exploring worlds invisible for the external spectator, stood the Prime Minister of Bavaria with 3D glasses in front of the giant front wall of the lab, no more than 20 minutes ago. After Markus Söder had complimented THWS to its 50-year anniversary, he took the opportunity to visit not only the celebration but also the newest lab of the University – the MAVEL Lab.
The acronym MAVEL stands for Mixed Augmented Virtual Experience Learning. Artificial (virtual reality) and augmented realities play an essential role in the Schweinfurt lab. "We emerged from THWS' VR lab", explains Florian Schuster, research associate of the Faculty of Business and Engineering. "As the area of extended reality (XR), so the augmented realities like VR and AR, keeps developing, it was necessary to also develop the lab". The "L" in MAVEL stands for learning. Innovative learning scenarios are to be implemented. According to Schuster, virtual escape rooms could for example be created that could only be successfully completed by solving programme-related tasks.
MAVEL Lab open to all degree programmes
The lab can be used by all students and lecturers of THWS. The lab team offers technical support to working groups that want to implement their own ideas. The core team consists of Florian Schuster, the technical employee Dominik Fritsch and head of the lab Professor Dr. Uwe Sponholz. Other working groups will also be working in the MAVEL Lab, among them is the working group around Professor Dr. Paul Pauli, the president of the University of Würzburg. Currently, there is the need to expand the team, Dominik Fritsch emphasises. "Until now, there have only been the two of us. The team is supposed to be expanded by a sound engineer and a designer for 2D and 3D."
The lab itself is still being developed. In future, there will be self-developed applications. The technical preconditions give Schuster and Fritsch optimism. "We have a ten-metre wall for projection, and the left and right wall. This makes for a total projection screen of 130 square metres", Schuster says. There also was impressive 3D sound by the Fraunhofer Institute and studio technology that enabled in-person teaching just as well as hybrid formats.
Funding of more than two million euro
The financial aid that made these purchases possible stemmed from a 160-page application to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). After the conception of the lab was considered a good idea, the people in charge were given the prospect of funding of more than two million euro. "We have a total of two years to spend the money", Fritsch explains. "Half the time has passed, and we have spent just over one million euro so far. Many small parts like haptic feedback suits or a smell simulator must still be bought."
Schuster is particularly looking forward to the haptic feedback suits. These can be imagined as a diving suit that enables users to dive into a virtual world. "If something happens in a virtual reality, for example if you hit yourself somewhere, the suit gives feedback via electronic impulses. That way, we can target human muscles directly from the virtual world."
Technical aids work in a connected way
Such experiences are made possible by the core of the lab – the stimulator machine. To explain this neologism, it must be clear what the new high-end lab is about. The MAVEL Lab is a multi-sensorial lab. Technical aids work together to create an artificial world that is as real as possible at the same time. So it is about the creation of stimuli independent from reality, and information that is supposed to target various human senses – simply multi-sensorial. All the hardware and software required for this purpose is created by the stimulator machine.
In particular, degree programmes from the psychological area will benefit from the many opportunities of the multi-sensorial work in the lab. Once the MAVEL Lab is completed, it will, among others, enable the creation of different anxiety states. People can confront their fears in the virtual world to overcome them during the application, in the best case. "One planned scenario is a walk-the-plank scenario, in which test subjects experience crossing a plank between two skyscrapers. This can be very difficult for people who are afraid of heights", Fritsch says. The virtual reality working group of the University of Würzburg, that is allocated at a chair of psychology, contributes a lot of experience.
Make products encountable prior to their existence
Another planned application is product evaluation. At first, this sounds rather mundane. However, products are supposed to be evaluated at THWS even before they exist. "This works by making it encountable and thus directly tangible. Here as well, the precondition is that the artificially created feedbacks can be perceived as real ones by the individual", Schuster says. According to him, any form of a product or service could be realised. From an architect showing his draft of a house to the client prior to the construction start, to the assembling of complex industry machines - anything would be possible.
These applications might still be dreams of the future - for now. There are plenty of ideas how to use the MAVEL Lab multifunctionally soon. Until then, numerous small steps must still be taken. Further technical equipment must be purchased, and hardware must be put into operation. There are also organisational questions that need clarification or coordination. Looking back on the time since the identification stage, and in sight of a lab ready for future operations, Schuster and Fritsch gladly take on the current workload. "Back then, when it was decided that the VR lab should be further developed, it took a long time until a concrete idea could be put onto paper", Fritsch remembers. "A lot has happened since then, and I imagine several working groups sitting around a table and coming up with mutual teaching and research projects."
Click here to listen to the podcast
"High-end VR Lab"
(podcast in German; English transcript available)