BYU engineering students use virtual reality to develop aerospace … – Deseret News

Jaren Wilkey, BYU

Lockheed Martin has awarded a grant to the BYU Department of Mechanical Engineering to develop aspects of a virtual reality training system that will advance Lockheeds digital engineering training. The program allows trainees to immerse themselves in a virtual reality environment where they can install, repair or replace components on a system themselves instead of watching someone do it on a video.

PROVO Lockheed Martin has awarded a grant to the BYU Department of Mechanical Engineering to develop aspects of a virtual reality training system that will advance Lockheeds digital engineering training.

BYU student Jeffery Smith, who interned for the company last year, has been developing a system where engineers can use virtual reality to undergo essential training.

The system leverages immersive 3-D technology from the Unity game engine to create training environments accessible to engineers from any location in the world as long as they have a virtual reality headset.

A lot of money has been invested in this product, and we want to leverage that investment for engineering purposes, BYU mechanical engineering professor John Salmon said in a statement. We are making training faster, making it cheaper and making it possible to train from remote locations.

The program allows trainees to immerse themselves in a virtual reality environment where they can install, repair or replace components on a system themselves instead of watching someone do it on a video. Since physical laws can be broken in the virtual word, a trainees avatar can also be overlaid onto the trainers avatar to develop muscle memory, improve precision of motion and repeat the same procedure from any angle.

If youre going to teach someone how to swing a baseball bat, you can show them and even put your arms around them, but you cant put your and their hands and arms exactly where they need to be at the same time, Salmon said. In virtual reality, you can. You can literally walk a mile in someone elses shoes.

Smith, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, calls it an all-inclusive sensory experience. He believes the finished project will enable engineers to transfer their skills into the real world faster and more accurately than current training methods.

For their part, Lockheed Martin engineers say virtual reality engineering saves them millions of dollars by avoiding extra design and build time.

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