Virtual Experiences Laboratory

The Virtual Experiences Laboratory (VXLab) is a multi-disciplinary virtual laboratory connecting visualisation and automation facilities in RMIT and industry.

We provide a space for students and industry to access advanced technology and expertise. The VXLab supports simulated components in the cloud, virtualisation and telepresence. Users explore collaborative experimental design, operation and testing of global cyberphysical systems.

For virtual and annotated reality, the VXLab includes advanced gaming and visualisation devices.

Key services

System design and testing

Prototyping and development

High definition and immersive imaging

Capabilities

We support a broad range of industry applications including manufacturing, electronic engineering, information technology, analytics, games and medical imaging.

Specific use cases for the VXLab include:

system design and testing research for industry partners with complex combinations of systems, design models and tests;
access to remote or dangerous sites or labs;
distributed, collaborative design, prototyping and troubleshooting requiring multiple views of complex data;
prototyping and development of “dashboards” for decision making;
management in automation systems, e.g. environmental management, building or cyber-physical infrastructure, incorporating maps and other custom views;
high resolution and immersive imaging.

Equipment and facilities

A Global Operations Visualization (GOV) Laboratory provides videoconference and streaming capability to remote sites combined with high resolution tiled display. The display is driven by a dedicated local display driver cluster compatible with parallel rendering middleware such as SAGE/SAGE2 and Google Liquid Galaxy.
VXPortals provide large ultra-high resolution, stereoscopic 3D, mobile displays with human gesture-aware interfaces. Portals can be rapidly re-arranged to create different display layouts enabling a variety of interaction experiences.
The Advanced Manufacturing Robot Interoperation Test (AMRIT) Laboratory provides industrial robot arms connected to the GOV lab, including sensors and cameras as “eyes on the robots”.
Network connectivity between sites is supported by dedicated links and research software stacks.
The Cyber-Physical Simulation (CS) Rack provides parallel cloud computing capability to support modeling and simulation.
External cloud services access is provided transparently and includes connectivity to the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) cloud infrastructure and IBM's Bluemix under a special academic initiative.

Projects

Industry and select academic student projects are supported by the lab.

Activities include AICAUSE Collaborative Engineering and Collaborative Engineering 2 projects, and summer projects and student capstone programming projects in the School of Science.

Contact

Industry and research centres who wish to partner with or utilise the facility, please contact Dr Ian Peake.

Students wishing to use the facility should contact their lecturer or research supervisor.

Key contacts

Director - Professor James Harland

Special expertise and/or user representatives are appointed to the committee from time to time.

If you are a user and wish to volunteer, please contact the lab manager, Dr Ian Peake, in the first instance.

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Research Facilities

Centres and collaborations

Our researchers connect, create and share expertise and resources in our Research Centres and collaborations.

Research

Together with our partners we develop and apply knowledge to shape a better world.

Acknowledgement of country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.

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