September-October 2018 NPJ

32 NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2018 simply walks and points at the object he is asked to identify. He can also walk up to each avatar in the lab and point out if the avatar is improperly dressed for the lab. Their progress is noted at the bottom of the screen. The system can be setup to be accessed using student ID, thus allowing for automatic notification when a student has completed his/her training. Second, and a much more comprehensive, model is that of a TRIGA research reactor facility. This model is a fairly accurate and to-scale representation of the TRIGA reactor facility that existed on the campus of UIUC until 2004, when it was decommissioned. A picture of the inside of the facility is shown in Figure 2. The facility had several levels, with the reactor bay near the center (Figure 2). Stairs led to the top of the bay. There was a large open area at the lowest level for conducting experiments with neutrons. Reactor was operated from a control room. The 3D virtual model, developed with Unity3D, has most of these features. A radiation field is also included. The dosimeter function is also available. A very simple, point reactor kinetics based, model for reactor kinetics is also built-in, which allows the “player” to virtually operate the reactor from the control room. A screenshot of the 3D model is shown in Figure 3. This virtual model of the reactor allows users to explore the facility, operate the reactor, and even play a dose minimization game in which the goal is to find objects placed at different locations in the facility while minimizing the dose received during the process.At the end of the game, the dosage received (in mSv), the time duration over which the radiation map was viewed, and a score based on these two factors, are displayed. Player can thus learn about three important concepts in radiation protection: time, distance, and shielding. A screenshot of the model while a person is playing the dose minimization game is shown in Figure 4. Models and Platforms As mentioned above, level and form of interactivity dictates the ease with which 3D models can be experienced on a certain platform. Various forms of interactions include: mouse-and-key- board operation, Kinect or LEAP (that track the movement of hands and fingers), smartphone based controls, XBOX game controller connected via Bluetooth (for smartphones), and hardware specific game controllers such as Oculus-Rift and HTC-VIVE. Easiest and most easily distributable models are those for desktop computer and laptops; to be controlled by mouse and keyboard. These models become a little more specialized when controlled using hand gestures captured by Kinect or LEAP. These virtual models can also be experienced in the 3D immersive environment of a head mounted device such as an Oculus-Rift or the HTC- Vive. The head mounted system allows the user to have a fully immersive, 360 degree (actually, 4 π solid angle) view of the facility. (To see what is behind in the virtual model, one simply needs to turn his or her neck.) One can easily explore the 3D space by using the joy stick of the game controller to move backward and forward, and by turning the neck/body to turn. However, features that relied on a mouse or keyboard for interaction Fig. 3. A screenshot of the virtual model. Fig. 4. A view of the lowest level in TRIGA model during the dose minimization game. Radiation level feature is turned on (with a zoomed-in view of the three counters). Virtual Reality... ( Continued from page 31)