This project was created through the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition. It was developed alongside an able-bodied exoskeleton targeted to help an aging workforce carry their PPE while cleaning up hazardous waste sites. The point of the simulation was to employ rapid prototyping by "trying on" the exoskeleton to identify any wear issues before 3D printing and metal manufacturing started.
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What makes this simulation special is our use of "shared space" VR. The two avatars seen interacting throughout the demo are two people with headsets on, in the same room! By using colocation, we were able to display a very convincing visual of the avatars speaking and interacting as one would in the "real world." Their distance in the simulation was 1-to-1 with physical space in the lab. This allowed them to walk around and know where the other person was - even though they couldn't "see" them, they could see their avatar in their place! The addition of hand tracking allowed for even more interesting communication, as it allowed them to point towards what they were looking at, and actually use their hands while talking to create a more natural conversation.
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In this demo, you will see three scenes - "passthrough" mode (blue room), a cleanup worksite, and the Hall of Exos.
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Passthrough mode is used as a sort of landing dock, where the people wearing the headset are still able to see out of the Quest 2's cameras. This is not visible in the demo due to Meta's restrictions on recording camera footage.
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The cleanup worksite is a recreation of a physical location where workers have to do different tasks that the exoskeleton can help aid. You can see various workers in the background in a variety of positions to show off the different abilities of the exoskeleton. It's helpful to get a feel for how the exoskeleton would really look and work on the job site, where there are hazards and debris to think about.
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The final scene, the Hall of Exos, is a display of all past and current designs of the exoskeleton. It is meant to look back on the iterations and how they've progressed as our engineers have learned what works and what doesn't. It serves as an inspiration for how far we have come from the original sketches to fully working exoskeletons ready to help those who need them.
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I was in charge of modeling and texturing all of the environments and set dressing them. I also created the avatars seen throughout the demo, including rigging, weight painting and animation. I was tasked with making the hands and rigging them for hand tracking as well.
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My mentor, Adam Bruce, was in charge of a majority of the backend of the project. With his 25+ years of experience in the world of programming and virtual reality, he was able to make sure everything in the simulation ran smoothly from start to finish.