Virtual Mission Control Room
Mission Control Rooms (MCRs) have barely changed since the beginning of the space era - experts sit at workstations arranged in rows with various displays and audio equipment. After more than 70 years, it's time to dare something new.
Today, especially since the pandemic, it is neither necessary nor advisable to force people to physically be in the same room to work together. We need to create new ways of collaboration.
Our idea is to move the MCR into the virtual reality. Each virtual MCR (VMCR) user can configure their own virtual MCR including an individual workspace and display setup. The VMCR includes several conventional displays and video-walls, as well as 3D models of different planets and orbiting spacecrafts including their attitude, ground track and vision cone. The user may move freely and interact with the VMCR by real walking or head movements, gesture recognition, control keys, and audio commands. Several users may collaborate and interact, using integrated audio connections and avatars. In addition, the VMCR implementation will also support multiple standard tools of collaboration, e.g., shared whiteboards and an integrated subsystem to record audio and video as well as screenshots and notes for documentation. Working together in VR will not only be immersive and interesting, but also productive.
On the server side, the VMCR consists of a microservice architecture for the individual self-hosted backend services and a central unity scene. We will provide scripts for easy backend setup and documentation for admins, developers and users.
The usability testing and the further development of the VMCR is carried out in cooperation with the Chair of Human Computer Interaction und XR Hub Würzburg.
The development of the Virtual Mission Control Room is financially supported by ESA as part of the ESA Ideas XR Campaign.
You can join the VMCR team - we offer BA & MA thesis topics and internships.
Links:
Contact us:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sergio Montenegro
sergio.montenegro[AT]uni-wuerzburg.de
Dipl.-Inform. Felix Sittner
felix.sittner@uni-wuerzburg.de
