Virtual Reality Environment for Engineering (VREE): A 3D Virtual Reality Environment for Training Civil Engineering Students
Aishwarya Magar, Monisha Mekala, Sneha Katturu, Shivani Bokka
Department of Computer Science
Faculty Supervisor: Shahrukh Humayoun
Structural failures due to design/material problems amount to only several hundred over the course of a decade. When it comes to real-life scenarios of engineering failures, students are provided with limited access to observe them due to the risk of further structural failure/collapse, fall hazards, etc. This results in the majority of the structural education being left to using traditional methods to reinforce motivation for design procedures. With the goal of enhancing students’ skills, competencies, and class engagement, we developed a simulated environment to train civil engineering (CE) students and practitioners about different kinds of post-earthquake damage to buildings. The resulting VR environment, called VREE (Virtual Reality Environment for Engineering), enables CE students to get training on understanding different kinds of structural damages without the risks of physically going inside the building. Also, the environment is created to evaluate students' and professionals' knowledge of structural damages in order to make sure that they have obtained the required skills and competencies. Through the implementation of these exercises, we aim to increase students’ engagement and material comprehension in upper division structural engineering.