A modular virtual reality system for engineering laboratory education

A Modular Virtual RealitySystem for EngineeringLaboratory EducationMAJID HASHEMIPOUR, HAMED FARAHANI MANESH, MERT BAL

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eastern Mediterranean University, Gazimagusa, Via Mersin 10,

Famagusta, Turkey

Received 20 September 2008; accepted 2 December 2008

ABSTRACT: The globalization trend has affected the tertiary education sector, resulting in an increased flow of

both students and academics across borders. Economic pressures on universities and the emergence of new

technologies have spurred the creation of new systems in engineering education. The recent advances in

computer graphics have exposed great potential in education at all levels. The Virtual Reality (VR) is a promising

technology which aims to assist the students in the visualization of concepts and to provide immediate graphical

feedback during the learning process. This article presents a modular interactive teaching package, called Virtual

Learning System (VLS), which can be used by people with little prior computer experience. VLS provides a

comprehensive and conductive yet dynamic and interactive environment that can be incorporated into various

courses in the field of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. The evaluation of the learning process with the

developed system has been done through laboratory reports, lab quizzes and questionnaires implemented with a

tutorial monitoring application. �2009Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 19: 305�314, 2011; View this

article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20312

Keywords: Virtual Reality; laboratory education; mechanical engineering; interactive learning environment;

computer-aided learning

INTRODUCTION

The globalization trend has affected the tertiary education sector,

resulting in an increased flow of both students and academics

across borders. The international student population has been

steadily increasing over the last 30 years. The number of

international students reached 2.5 million in 2004, which was a

41% increase in the total figures for 1999 [3]. Some forecasts

predict that it will reach 7.6 million students by the year 2025.

There is a continuous increase in construction of new higher

education institutes to meet this demand. There has been more

than a 30% increase in the number of higher education institutes

in Turkey alone over the last 8 years. By and large, the new

institutes are plagued by restricted budgets. Establishing an

engineering faculty in most of these institutes has not been always

inspired. The reason is due largely to the lack of qualified

teachers, space and facilities [5]. In engineering education,

laboratories have been the essential part of undergraduate studies

since most engineering instruction takes place in the laboratory

[8]. Seymour and Hewitt stated that inadequate laboratory

facilities are the major reason for under-qualified graduates. On

the other hand, surveys have shown dissatisfaction with the lack

of laboratory exercise as one of primary factors leading to

students’ basic courses of engineering [1].

To date, many studies have shown that the use of computers

in teaching and laboratory work is feasible, and has changed the

economics of engineering education [5,9]. It has a positive

influence on the motivation of students and educational effective-

ness as compared to hands-on labs. The computer has opened new

possibilities in the laboratory, including simulation, automated data

acquisition, remote control of instruments, rapid data analysis, and

presentation.

Computer application can be exploited as a powerful tool for

educators in updating or developing new curriculum [6,7]. It also

can provide instant and direct feed back on performance

measurement, therefore enhancing the learning outcome.

The recent advances in computer graphics have exposed

great potential in education at all levels [2,4]. The Virtual Reality

(VR), which is a synthetic environment providing a sense of

reality and an impression of ‘‘being here,’’ has been increasingly

employed in various design and manufacturing application. Such

applications include computer-aided design (CAD), telerobotics,

assembly planning, manufacturing system visualization and

simulation [10�12]. Hence, the VR holds great potential to

solve problems in manufacturing applications before being

employed in practical manufacturing thereby preventing costly

mistakes in operating expensive and dangerous equipment

[13,15]. Studies have emphasized the potential of VR technology

Correspondence to H. F. Manesh ([email protected]).

� 2009 Wiley Periodicals Inc.

305

for education and training. Empirical data have been collected on

the relative success of VR in terms of instructional effectiveness

as well as the transfer of skill to the real world [8].

Despite its advantages, very few educational tools based on

VR have been developed and reported in the literature [8]. The

educational systems, which have been developed by individuals,

are dedicated to certain engineering fields with specific problem

domains [16,17].

Several VR-based commercial software packages have been

developed for engineering and various needs of the industry such

as DELMIA, VISFACTORY, COSIMIR, and FLUENT, etc.

[18�21]. The majority of these packages seem promising for

specific industrial proposes, but require high computer knowl-

edge, and skills for operations, resulting in need of great deal of

planning and restructuring to incorporate into engineering

courses. Hence they are found too sophisticated for education

purposes.

This article presents the development of a modular Virtual

Learning System (VLS), which can be included into courses of

various engineering disciplines.

The VLS is an educational software system, which can be

used by people with little prior computer experience. It is

composed of modules, which utilize VR-based simulations in

order to assist the student in ‘‘visualizing’’ the concepts and to

provide immediate graphical feedbacks during the learning

processes. The system is currently in use at Eastern Mediterra-

nean University, in the Mechanical Engineering Department to

assist the following undergraduate and graduate courses: Heat

Transfer, Fluid Mechanics, Automotive Engineering, Computer

Integrated Manufacturing, Materials Engineering, Management

Information Systems, Advanced Manufacturing Systems.

The article includes a brief description of each VLS module.

The operational aspects of a VCIMLAB module are presented in

Demonstration: Implementation of VLS in CIM Laboratory

Education Through VCIMLAB Module Section. Assessment

Section lists the educational contributions and outcome of the

presented system. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in the

Educational Contributions and Outcome Section.

THE OVERVIEW OF VLS MODULES

The proposed VLS has been designed and developed as a

software system. Modularity is addressed as the main issue in

VLS (Fig. 1). During the development of the system, a set of

fundamental functionalities and a set of software requirements for

the system have been identified to ensure a coherent software

generation, resulting in high modularity and re-usable system.

New module can be added to the system by following sets of

defined requirements in development of new modules.

There are some technical challenges involved in VLS

development, such as the exchange of data among modules,

which is resolved by assigning a database to each module and

considering a data server with direct access to all the databases to

manage all the shared data in the program. VLS system

configuration has been developed in order to access each module

through different work stations and setting the whole system after

adding new module by defining a set of configuration in a file. In

addition, system configuration allows the user to dynamically

load his/her modules through designed user interface by specify-

ing their execution features (i.e., profile, assigned tasks,

scheduling, and completed tasks, etc.) followed by exporting

the information to be stored in databases. Figure 2 depicts the

general architecture of the VLS (Fig. 2).

The VLS consists of five distinct modules. Each module has

been designed and developed for a specific content. Each module

is based on a standard personal computer and the MS Windows

9X/XP operating system in either standalone or network

environment with minimum 512 RAM, 120 GB HD capacity,

Pentium V processor, and a high-color 16 bit screen resolution.

All the modules have developed by Visual Cþþ 6.0 and My SQL

as databases connectivity.

Virtual Reality-Based Fluid Flow Visualization System(VRJET)

The VRJET is a VR-based educational visualization package

designed to assist the courses in thermal-fluid sciences such as

fluid mechanics and heat transfer (Fig. 3). The VRJET provides 3-

D visualization of the dynamic flow fields with the temperature

distribution using the velocity and temperature data obtained

from numerical Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simula-

tions. The students can learn and investigate the flow structure

and temperature profile in different Reynolds number and

different nozzle jet to plate spacing. This package can be used

for research, educational, and engineering purposes [22].

Computer-Aided Multi-Purpose Materials TestingSystem (MULTIMOS)

The Computer-Aided Multi-Purpose Materials Testing System is

an educational project that aims at improving the effectiveness of

materials science laboratory instruction by upgrading the conven-

tional materials science laboratory equipment into a fully

automated laboratory instrument supported by a user-friendly

operating system [23].

The overall system constitutes a range of materials science

laboratory instruments such as tensile/compression test machine,

creep test machine, fatigue test machine and hardness test

machine, upgraded through the implementations of cost- effective

software and hardware components.

The system software (Multi-Purpose Materials Testing

Machine Operating Software) MULTIMOS, has been developed

to provide user-to-machine interface for controlling experiments

in the materials science laboratory via an on-board data

acquisition system. The seven distinct modules in MULTIMOS

provide access to the material test machines in order to monitor,Figure 1 The VLS framework.

306 HASHEMIPOUR, MANESH, AND BAL

Figure 2 The VLS general architecture. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available

at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]

Figure 3 The VRJET module. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at

wileyonlinelibrary.com.]

ENGINEERING LABORATORY EDUCATION 307

display and archive the real-time experimental data acquired from

a number of sensors installed in the corresponding test machine.

The modules are supported by user-friendly interfaces with

interactive tutorials supporting the instruction of the course. The

MULTIMOS aids users in performing materials science experi-

ments, processing the test data, and calculating the test results for

different engineering materials.

MULTIMOS, as a support tool for laboratory instruction,

improves teaching efficiency by saving instructional time and

costs, and allowing the students to quickly understand the

fundamentals of materials science by performing multi-parameter

and multi-condition experiments by using the multi-sample

testing capability of the software either locally or on-line through

the Internet (Fig. 4).

Figure 4 Architecture of Computer-Aided Multi-Purpose Materials Testing System.

Figure 5 The VR-RA module. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at



Virtual Reality-Based Requirement Analysis (VR-RA)

The Virtual Reality-based Requirement Analysis (VR-RA)

module is used for presenting a manufacturing system in order

to aid in requirement analysis for Computer Integrated Manu-

facturing (CIM) systems implementation (Fig. 5). The VR-RA

tool uses a desktop VR system to model the physical as-is and

the to-be models of an enterprise under analysis. It also allows

the users to interact intuitively with the virtual environment

and its objects, as if they were real, by immersing them in a

highly realistic 3-D environment. The tool assists engineering

students in the modeling and analyzing of the relationship

between the material and information flows. VR-RA promotes

modeling and understanding of complex systems and reduces

the costs and the time involved at this stage by producing

precise and accurate specification requirements for plans

and designs for CIM systems. It also provides the basics of

structured analysis and design techniques with different examples

[24].

Virtual Gearbox Design Module (VGD)

The objective of the Virtual Gearbox Design (VGD) module is to

assist the automotive engineering course (Fig. 6). This module

gives the students the right steps for designing a manual gearbox

by supplying all the necessary calculations and directions.

Furthermore, students can visualize the internal work of gearbox

during the design process and investigate how it will operate step-

by-step [16].

The Virtual Computer Integrated ManufacturingLABoratory Module

The Virtual Computer Integrated Manufacturing LABoratory

(VCIMLAB) module is an educational system developed for

training on the principles of CIM and industrial automation

systems, which contain programmable industrial robots, Com-

puter Numerical Control (CNC) machines, quality control

systems and various automated material handling equipments.

The system provides a three-dimensional interactive,

‘‘virtual reality’’ simulation of laboratory environment, in which

various laboratory experiments can be performed.

The VR simulation environment simulates the real laboratory

with all of its visual and functional aspects in order to represent the

real laboratory closely. The students can navigate through the virtual

laboratory, explore the objects and operate the CIM equipment in

VR environment according to the real operating principles and

instructions given by the course instructor. Figure 7 shows a view

from a real CIM laboratory located at the Eastern Mediterranean

University and a screen shot view of the VCIMLAB module with

the virtual model of the same laboratory [25].

DEMONSTRATION: IMPLEMENTATION OF VLS INCIM LABORATORY EDUCATION THROUGH VCIMLABMODULE

The VCIMLAB module has been designed and developed for use

as a visual demonstration and laboratory support tool for teaching

the various multi-disciplinary topics related to integrated

manufacturing systems; such as industrial robotics, numerical

control, CNC programming, scheduling, process planning,

production planning and control of flexible manufacturing

systems. The module has been used for teaching engineering

students the theory and the operating principles of CIM systems

through interactive demonstrations and the standalone experi-

ments in the virtual environment.

The VCIMLAB module provides several distinguished

combinations of laboratory models for a step-by-step approach

to learning the main topics of CIM systems, starting from the

easiest and going through to the hardest case. These distinguished

simulation environments, also named as ‘‘rooms’’ contain CIM

laboratory training units with different configurations and differ-

ent levels of difficulties. Each room focuses on a specific topic of

the CIM system. Figure 8 shows the flow of operations in the

instructional process of CIM laboratory education.

The interactive tutorials have been prepared for each room

to provide the background information about robotic material

Figure 6 Virtual Gearbox Design module. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is

available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]


Figure 7 The Real CIM Laboratory versus Virtual CIM Laboratory (VCIMLAB module) writing and

executing robot programs and so on. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at


Figure 8 The flow of operations in VCIMLAB module. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue,

which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]


handling, theory and operating principles of robot arms. The

tutorial also includes interactive simulations for the ‘‘how to?’’

instructions of using the VR environment, using software

interfaces, operating robot arm through teach pendant, using

robot control software, writing and executing robot programs and

so on.

According to the room selected, the corresponding VR

operations are carried out by the students. These can be low level

operations such as operating the robot arms in order to write robot

programs for robotic material handling operations and editing

CNC programs, which are to run in the VR environment.

As an example of these operations, the student is given a

robotic task of moving the parts/blocks from specified locations

to specified destination points. In order to perform these tasks, the

student has to operate the virtual model of the robot arm to the

desired points, which the robot arm passes through during its

motion, and store/save the necessary positions into the virtual

robot’s memory by using the teach pendant (Fig. 9). At the end of

this process, that is, when all the necessary points of robot motion

are stored, the student has to write and compile robot programs by

entering movement and control commands into the robot control

program interface in the virtual environment.

The next step after the low-level programming operations, is

the high-level CIM operations such as: production planning,

preparation of bill of materials, master schedules, and material

requirements planning (MRP) take place through the VR

environment. Once the students are satisfied with the schedules

they have developed, they can dispatch the manufacturing orders

to the virtual factory by VCIMLAB CIM Manager, validate the

operations and collect the data in order to optimize the

performance of the given system (Fig. 10).

The VCIMLAB—Virtual CIM Manager enables students to

use and study components and subsystems individually as well as

the entire integrated CIM system by performing the following

basic functions:

Generation of the Production Plans: Fills in details of

the production plan, how to produce the parts, submitted

in an order.

Execution of Production Plans: Controls and monitors

the CIM equipment in the virtual environment to

produce the parts as specified in the production plan.

Evaluation of Production Parameters: Caries out

functions such as, keeping throughput records and

production statistics, monitoring queue lengths

and time data for analyzing overall system performance.

From the VR environments of VCIMLAB, every student on

his/her desktop is able to develop programs and production plans

for controlling a CIM Line. The students are able to make and

learn from their mistakes without endangering themselves or the

equipment.

The evaluation of learning for each experiment through

VCIMLAB module takes place in the forms of: (1) A laboratory

report, in which the students are asked to report the performed

experiment by the procedures followed, results obtained, analysis

and conclusions. (2) A questionnaire, which involves the

questions regarding the VCIMLAB module in order to collect

feedback and opinion about the bugs, usability and effectiveness

of the software in students’ learning on the studied topic. (3) A lab

quiz, given to all the students in order to measure the overall

understanding of the subject studied through the laboratory

experiment.

ASSESSMENT

A set of experiments have been designed and implemented for

assessing the students’ learning through the VR-based learning

system, presented in this article. The experiments have being

performed every semester over the past 4 years and with total

Figure 9 Screenshot image of VCIMLAB module from Room 1, Basic Robot Training. [Color figure can

be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]


participation of eighty undergraduate students. The objective is to

determine effectiveness of VR in learning process.

All the participants are students, who take the CIM course

and have knowledge of computers and manufacturing systems.

However, they are not preferred to have a prior knowledge or

hands-on experience with robotics or automated manufacturing

applications.

Initially the assessment is performed for two main phases:

(i) evaluation of learning outcome, and (ii) evaluation of usability

of the system.

Evaluation of Learning Outcome

The experiments for measuring learning outcome using VR

technology is performed in two main stages. At the first stage,

groups of students are asked to use the VCIMLAB to complete a

given task. Typical tasks required for the evaluators are; operate

robot arms, pick parts, record positions and write robot programs

for automated manufacturing operations in the virtual environ-

ments.

At the second stage, the students are taken to a real

laboratory; and they are asked to do the same tasks again using

the real hardware. At the end, the students are given a lab quiz in

order to test their understanding of the experiment. Students are

also asked to respond to general questions regarding their virtual

experience.

Evaluation of Usability

In addition to the quizzes, the students are asked to answer the

questionnaires for usability evaluation of the VCIMLAB software

system as a part of the evaluation process.

The usability surveys have been designed according to the

five subscales of the SUMI usability assessment method [26]. The

subscales are defined in SUMI are namely; Efficiency: reflects

the degree to which the software helps the user accomplish their

task. Affect: measures the emotional response of the user to the

software. Helpfulness: indicates whether system is relatively self-

explanatory, and for which the help system and documentation

are good or not. Control: shows the degree to which users feel in

control of the software, rather than being controlled by the

software. Learn ability: measures how quickly and easily the

users felt they could master the software or a new feature of the

software. According to these scales, a system that achieves a

score in the range of 40�60 is comparable in usability to most of

successful commercial software products.

However, these subscales are defined for usability analysis

for general software. Hence, in our survey, some additional

application-related questions are particularly designed for the

usability of the VR system using some of the heuristics as defined

in Ref. [27].

Results

Figure 11 presents a summary of the VCIMLAB software

usability evaluation based on the questionnaires. These descrip-

tive statistics were given on each of the five usability subscales.

The questionnaire results were calculated and scored based on the

SUMI method. Additional evaluation based on defined VR-

specific scales has been done separately with the survey results

and have been presented in Figure 12. In addition, the average

rating of answers given to the some of the specific application-

related questions regarding the learning outcome is presented in

Table 1.

Figure 10 Virtual CIM Manager. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at



EDUCATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS AND OUTCOME

The VR-based laboratory work-support system VLS has been

successfully used in the education and training of the under-

graduate courses of Mechanical Engineering Department in

EMU.

According to our experience with the VR-based system

developed in laboratory training, the following points have been

found significant:

* The VR-based system creates a sense of ‘‘being there,’’ so

that the students can feel free to develop solutions to ‘‘what

if?’’ scenarios in real time with intelligent objects of real-

time manufacturing equipment.* In general, the VR environment has given the tutors the

opportunity to introduce their students to highly compli-

cated and expensive devices and systems in a cost-effective

way. The use of VR is a strong alternative to conventional

expensive educational laboratories.* The modular structure of the system allows the students and

tutors to alternate laboratory configurations and input

parameters to contribute to design of an experiment, which

is essential for the accreditation procedures such as the

guidelines as defined in ABET 2004 [28].* Through the expandable learning environments of VLS, a

large number of students can be hosted for performing

experiments in the virtual laboratories.* The VLS modules are capable of updating the laboratory

equipment in order to cope with the rapid changes of

technology and high risk of obsolescence.

CONCLUSIONS

The VLS developed, offers a portable and affordable VR solution

for educational institutes. The VLS package creates a modular

accessible, consistent learning environment, and a continuous

learning cycle for building key students skills and capabilities.

The past 10 years experience in exploiting of VLS, suggests

that, students have gained a realistic understanding and

appreciation of the practical advantages of the VLS teaching

package. Techniques as well as tools developed for this package

can also serve as templates for future reference and further

development of new modules.

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Figure 12 Evaluation of the Virtual Reality platform based on heuristic

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Table 1 Results of the Selected Questions From the VCIMLAB

Questionnaires

Question

Overall score

(1�5)

VCIMLAB was motivating for me to learn more about

Robotics and CIM systems

4.5

Virtual Reality helped me visualize the manufacturing

process

4

VCIMLAB has sufficient visual level of detail to meet

the lesson objectives

4

I was familiar with the concepts and operations of real

Lab devices after the Virtual CIM Laboratory

Experiments

5

I could operate the real industrial robots with the lessons

I learnt in this module

3.5


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BIOGRAPHIES

Majid Hashemipour is an associate professor

at Eastern Mediterranean University. He has

extensive experience in both mechanical and

industrial engineering. His research interests

include computer integrated manufacturing,

holonic manufacturing systems, digital manu-

facturing, and application of virtual reality in

requirement analysis. Dr. Hashemipour

received his PhD in Mechanical engineering

from Eastern Mediterranean University, N. Cyprus.

Hamed Farahani Manesh is a research

assistant at Department of Mechanical Engi-

neering at Eastern Mediterranean University,

N. Cyprus. He received his first Master’s

Degree in Information Systems and the second

in Mechanical Engineering from EMU. Cur-

rently, he is involved in a research group,

which carries out research and development

activities for industry-oriented projects of

intelligent manufacturing systems, automation, networked manufac-

turing, virtual environment in modeling and simulations of agile and

de-centralized manufacturing control, holonic manufacturing, and

virtual reality based laboratory education. He is member of ASME,

SAE.

Mert Bal received his PhD degree in mechan-

ical engineering from the Eastern Mediterra-

nean University, N. Cyprus. He was research

assistant and lecturer in this university from

2001 to 2008. He is currently Post-Doctoral

Research Fellow in the University of Western

Ontario, Department of Electrical and Com-

puter Engineering and Visiting Researcher at

the National Research Council Canada, Lon-

don, ON. He has authored or coauthored various journal and

conference publications. His research interests include: virtual reality,

intelligent agents, agent-based manufacturing scheduling, systems

control and automation, robotics, holonic manufacturing systems,

agile manufacturing and wireless sensor networks (real-time

applications and localization algorithms).
