WKU XR Lab students honored at Mid-South ACM Conference - WKU News

Students from the WKU XR Lab received awards for their probe presentations Friday (Nov. 11) astatine the Mid-South ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Conference successful Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

An interdisciplinary squad of 15 students representing Ogden College of Science and Engineering, Potter College of Arts & Letters, and The Gatton Academy attended the conference. The 5 supporting XR Lab module successful attendance were Professors Greg Arbuckle and Michael Galloway from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Professors Kristina Arnold, Mark Simpson, and Truth Tran from the Department of Art & Design.

Every XR Lab pupil presenting received awards for their research, with pupil teams placing archetypal successful undergraduate insubstantial presentations, and first, second, and 3rd successful poster presentations.

First spot for an undergraduate insubstantial was awarded to the “Eclipse Totality Megamovie Application” probe presented by Joey Jackson, Travis Peden, and Lance Warfel, with exertion prototype improvement by Madison Whittle. This task aims to trial the bounds of national science, oregon the signifier of nationalist information and collaboration successful technological probe to summation technological knowledge, by involving implicit a cardinal members of the nationalist successful capturing information connected the full star eclipse occurring connected April 8, 2024, spanning from Texas to Maine. This task seeks to grow upon a akin 1 conducted successful 2017, which utilized 1,000 national scientists, to a importantly larger scale, by processing an incentivized, user-friendly exertion for smartphones that volition utilize camera tech to instrumentality a bid of photos and videos of the eclipse.

First spot for posters was awarded to the squad of Nicholas Clayton, Austin Costello, Will Herring, Cole Johnson, Zachary Mers, Alyssa Putman, Michael Putman, and Emma Young for their task connected “UAV Cave Mapping and VR Experience.” This squad has been moving to physique and usage an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) drone to representation the wrong of caves and usage the information to “rebuild” these caves successful virtual reality, frankincense eliminating the request to physically participate them. The expected effect of the task is to make a virtual situation that accurately represents the geographical information collected by the drone utilizing a LIDAR sensor, overlaid with much elaborate texture and representation information. This task hopes to make applications for LIDAR information and the usage of Unity successful creating experiences successful virtual world to let for acquisition and probe projects specified arsenic cave exploration.

The Gatton Academy pupil squad of Ivy Bowers, Jonathon Reilly, and Carolina Wheeler placed 2nd successful poster presentations with their task connected creating a “Virtual Reality Campus Tour Using 3D Modeling and Scanning.” Their task investigates the usage of 3D modeling and scanning successful the operation of enhanced lifelike virtual world circuit experiences. While galore virtual world tours usage 360-degree camera imagery due to the fact that of its comparative ease, these tours bash not let the idiosyncratic to interact with the situation and research freely, nor bash they let for the reconstruction of past sites wherever imagery nary longer exists. This VR project, created utilizing the Unity crippled engine, produces a realistic and interactive virtual circuit of immoderate of Western Kentucky University’s oldest buildings, some successful their contiguous authorities and astatine the clip of their construction. This enactment serves arsenic a impervious of conception for larger standard projects involving true-to-life interactive virtual world environments, particularly those concerning the reconstruction of past sites, an important improvement due to the fact that of their imaginable for usage successful acquisition settings and successful the assemblage designation of past events.

Madison Whittle presented the third-place poster connected her probe “Utilizing Innovative Technology to Bring Specialized Museum Exhibits and Tech Optimism to Rural Communities successful South Central Kentucky.” Her squad seeks to combat the comparative deficiency of entree those surviving successful South Central Kentucky person to depository experiences done utilizing the WKU Extended Reality Lab to bring humanities and taste experiences to SoKY, present innovative exertion to agrarian communities, and beforehand tech optimism. Whittle and her squad developed an interactive virtual depository acquisition targeting SoKY-specific civilization and history, with the superior interaction of the task serving to marque education, taste experiences, and innovative tech processes much accessible successful agrarian communities. Featured exhibits see an interactive blues theatre acquisition done the Jack Dappa Blues Foundation; a virtual examination betwixt our modern field and the Civil War fort that erstwhile resided there; and a reflective auditory acquisition that celebrates a section African American assemblage and the resulting diaspora aft WKU’s enlargement successful the 1960s.

Additional accusation astir the laboratory and its projects tin beryllium recovered connected its website, besides developed by pupil Madison Whittle, astatine www.wkuxr.com.

Contact: Kristina Arnold, (270) 745-6566