Virtual Reality for Remote Controlled Robotics in Engineering Education

There is a high demand for high-end lab equipment in engineering education, especially for courses that require practical hands-on lab exercises. However, this equipment is quite expensive which forces some institutions to seek other alternatives or forego them altogether. In addition, online courses tend to be light on hardware because of the practical and technical challenges associated with running remote hardware-based laboratories. Therefore, a system is needed that allows students who are enrolled in remote courses to experience hardware-intensive classes just as they would an in-person course (especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic). In this work, use virtual and augmented reality to build and test a remote UR-10 robotics lab that allows students to work together on a hands-on robotics-based lab. In the future, we plan to demonstrate its technical and pedagogical suitability by running a user study in a real-world class whereby remote students enrolled in a course will participate in a series of experiments to control a UR-10 robot arm. It opens up avenues to explore the advantages and shortcomings of running coordinated group lab exercises between students from different institutions, time-zones, and continents by time-decoupling the schedules. The use of a Virtual Reality interface coupled with a digital twin of the UR10 robot will allow us to investigate the suitability of different user interfaces, and what VR tools would best facilitate remote group work and faculty instruction.