EnVRmental: VR Experience
The purpose of this project is to engage users with a VR Experience and teach them about environmental issues
This is a project I worked on as part a team during an IPRO class at Illinois Tech.
We attached a sense of heat to the experience, to create longer-lasting memories with the user based on psychological studies we researched.
Our final product integrated a room heater, and a peltier module the user would put their hands on to feel the change in heat.
The user experienced a 360 video we produced using footage of an actual forest fire from NIST. Facts and statistics were played in conjunction with the video, and we used cues from the video to activate the heating elements. For example, when the fire started the room heater would turn on and the peltiers would heat up.
We controlled the peltier modules using an Arduino and H-Bridge I built from scratch with transistors. The Arduino also controlled the room heater with a relay.
Working on this project was also a lesson in time crunch. We had less than a week (during finals week) to assemble our presentation.
We presented our VR experience at IPRO day to professionals in the environmental field.
We got some great feedback, and came in second place in the environmental category!
The next step with this project is to design a full booth that could be placed in the Kaplan institute. This way our project can inform people about environmental issues, and we can perform an actual study on how heat effects the educational experience.