Virtual Reality and Gamification: investigating the use of Virtual Reality technology to support simulation within an industrial gamification environment

Application Deadline: May 2017
Start Date: June 2017
Eligibility: UK, EU, Rest of the world
Duration: 3 years
REF: SATM0007

This project will investigate the use of Virtual Reality technology to support simulation within an industrial gamification environment. The use of gamification for the development of factory layouts and the operation of production facilities is a new research field. The re-emergence of gamification as a concept has been triggered by falling price points for hardware, ability to track personal data and the ubiquity and accessibility of the gaming paradigm. The use of SimCity as a metaphor for the design of this system is appropriate as the mode of simulated game environment will be the overriding framework for its operation.

Virtual Reality hardware in the form of Head Mounted Devices (HMD) (such as Oculus) will be utilised in addition to simple motion detection devices such as Leap Motion and Kinect. It is an aim of this research that the user of the system should not be ‘tied down’ to the use of a fixed VR cave type environment but should be able to explore gamified scenarios with only the need for minimal hardware.
Virtual Reality technologies will be used in combination with simulation systems such as Discrete Event and agent based simulation, providing an event driven graphical user interface. The VR representation may be viewed from different angles. Worker movements on the factory floor when viewed in three dimensions can highlight potential clashes and bottlenecks that would be experienced in real life.

One of the objectives of this work is to contribute to the development of a methodology of game interaction, providing rewards to users for beneficial actions taken in the game environment and appropriate balancing of risks and opportunities in the design and simulation of new factory shop floor designs. The mode of communication between VR and simulation systems has yet to be fully established. This PhD will also contribute to the establishment of a semantic based protocol for interoperation of both hardware and software components that compose the gamification system.

The gamification system will be capable of being connected to live business and manufacturing systems on a read only basis and will accept certain instances of live streamed sensor data. This real time production of scenarios will allow a new level of realism to be modelled, providing a safe environment for experimentation with new production rule and methods. The gamification engine will in some cases allow for the automated generation of new or adapted scenarios based on machine learning techniques providing a new mode of automated experiment development.

Entry requirements:
Applicants should have a first or second class UK honors degree or equivalent in a related discipline, such as mathematics, or engineering. The ideal candidate should have some understanding of VR software and hardware and general concepts, semantic ontology production and machine learning experience. The candidate should be self-motivated, have good communication skills for regular interaction with other stakeholders, with an interest for industrial research.

Funding:
Sponsored by HSSMI DETC, this studentship will provide a bursary of up to £14,500 - £ 18,000 p.a. (tax free) plus fees* for three years.

* To be eligible for this funding, applicants must be a UK national. We require that applicants are under no restrictions regarding how long they can stay in the UK i.e. have no visa restrictions or applicant has “settled status” and has been “ordinarily resident” in the UK for 3 years prior to start of studies and has not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education. (This does not apply to UK or EU nationals). Due to funding restrictions all EU nationals are eligible to receive a fees-only award if they do not have “settled status” in the UK.