Extended reality (XR) is an umbrella term to describe augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR).
AR technologies superimpose graphics on top of real-world presentations. VR technologies allow users to fully immerse themselves in a virtual environment by wearing headsets that provide 360-degree views of a virtual world. And MR technologies combine aspects of both AR and VR.
Austin Yarger, lecturer II in electrical engineering and computer science in the College of Engineering, gives students the opportunity to create their own AR game in his course, “Extended Reality for Social Impact.”
Similar to the popular AR game “Pokémon Go,” Yarger’s students create “A2Go” in which players walk around Ann Arbor, viewing the town through their phone or tablet’s camera lens, and plant virtual trees. The goal of the game is to plant enough trees to generate tourism dollars and invest in building out their own Arboretum and defending it from squirrels.
In VR applications, some headsets are paired with hand controllers to give users greater mobility while interacting with their virtual surroundings.
The Center for Academic Innovation supported an innovation projection with the College of Engineering’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences to create a VR simulation of U-M’s now-closed nuclear reactor laboratory.
The simulation allows users to don a headset and walk through the laboratory — filled with realistic renderings of cluttered tables and tangles of cables on floors — and get close to the nuclear core.
Peter Toogood, director of Michigan Drug Discovery and research associate professor of medicinal chemistry in the College of Pharmacy, uses MR technology in a graduate level course he calls, “Augmenting Reality in Medicinal Chemistry.”
Students in the course learn how drugs work while wearing VR headsets that make it seem as though complex proteins and molecules are suspended in the air.
Using hand controllers, students can manipulate the molecules, zoom in to examine their structures and interrogate the way in which a drug molecule interacts with its target.
