Taking the step from edutainment to eRobotics - A novel approach for an active render-framework to face the challenges of modern, multi-domain VR simulation systems

Abstract

When talking about Virtual Reality (VR) today, most people just think of entertainment or education. Indeed, “edutainment”, which is a mixture of the words entertainment and education, has always been a major domain of VR applications. VR simulation technology is also a well-known field of virtual training and engineering today and widely applied in research and development in a broad range of different domains. Due to the wide availability of realistic computer graphics in our day-to-day life, our eyes get spoiled by stunning computer generated virtual worlds nowadays; thus, the acceptance of these applications depends more and more on the realistic, state-of-the-art rendering of the virtual environment, as well as the convenient usage. While edutainment applications and models are specifically built to fulfill these requirements, the data, models and system structures of current VR simulation system in scientific domains usually are not. They are pure expert systems that demand for specific expertise in order to use them or understand the simulation results. The novel field of eRobotics can be understood as an eService related to advanced robotic applications and engineering. We will introduce novel system structures and techniques, which enable us to make the step from pure edutainment applications to complex but comprehensive eRobotics applications that can serve as a holistic development support tool in a broad range of different domains.