The Virtual Experiences Lab - a platform for global collaborative engineering and beyond

TL;DR

The Virtual Experiences Lab (VxLab) is a comprehensive global platform integrating visualization, networking, high-performance computing, and remote sensors to facilitate collaborative engineering, research, and education across industries and academia.

Contribution

This paper introduces the VxLab platform, combining diverse technologies for global collaborative engineering, and demonstrates its application in industry, research, and education settings.

Findings

Successful deployment in industry projects and research

Enhanced remote collaboration and visualization capabilities

Support for multidisciplinary and multi-architecture workflows

Abstract

We are developing the Virtual Experiences (Vx)Lab, a research and research training infrastructure and capability platform for global collaboration. VxLab comprises labs with visualisation capabilities, including underpinning networking to global points of presence, videoconferencing and high-performance computation, simulation and rendering, and sensors and actuators such as robotic instruments locally and in connected remote labs. VxLab has been used for industry projects in industrial automation, experimental research in cloud deployment, workshops and remote capability demonstrations, teaching advanced-level courses in games development, and student software engineering projects. Our goal is for resources to become a "catalyst" for IT-driven research results both within the university and with external industry partners. Use cases include: multi-disciplinary collaboration, prototyping and troubleshooting requiring multiple viewpoints and architectures, dashboards and decision support for global remote planning and operations.