Students explore eXtended-Reality (XR) solutions for the industry of the future
Final presentation
How can extended reality contribute to safer, more sustainable and human-centred industry? In the course Industrial Project with Extended Reality, students at Uppsala University have developed and presented XR solutions that reflect realistic industrial environments. The projects give students hands-on experience with technologies that are already used in research and industrial development.
The students recently presented their second and final project in the course. During the presentations, they demonstrated how virtual and immersive environments can be used to explore industrial processes in a laboratory setting, where the XR solutions are built using the game engine Unity and experienced through XR technologies such as virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
The course is project-based and offered at both basic and advanced level. Students work in groups and complete two projects that combine technical development with project management, collaboration and reflection. The final project focuses on exploring how XR technologies can be applied in industrial contexts, with an emphasis on understanding, analysis and usability rather than finished products.
– Extended reality offers powerful opportunities to support learning, decision-making and operator empowerment in industrial environments. Through the XR courses, students gain hands-on experience with technologies that are shaping the future of manufacturing and digital transformation, says Kaveh Amouzgar, Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering.
Kaveh Amouzgar, Associate senior lecturer at the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering
Working on the projects gave students a concrete understanding of both the possibilities and the limitations of XR technologies. An important part of the work was getting different technical components to function together and turning ideas into coherent solutions.
– The experience with XR development was both challenging and highly rewarding. Establishing a functional connection between the laboratory environment and the XR environment was easier than we initially expected, while working with the game engine and XR equipment proved more demanding. Overall, our understanding of virtual environments, both in terms of possibilities and actual use cases, broadened significantly, says Oscar Rosengren, a student in the Master of Science in Engineering programme in Industrial Engineering and Management.
He highlights the practical structure of the course as particularly valuable.
– XR is often portrayed as a technology that can solve almost everything in the future. For me, the course clarified in which applications the technology is genuinely useful. That is probably the most important insight I take away from the course.
Students in group 4: Elis Amcoff, Simon Arnestrand, Linus Carlsson, Hugo Liljedahl and Oscar Rosengren
The course is closely connected to ongoing research at Uppsala University, where XR is used as a tool to support people in industrial contexts.
– The XR courses are closely linked to our research. Students work with the same types of XR technologies, data-driven methods and human-centred design principles that we develop and test in larger research and collaboration projects, says Kaveh Amouzgar.
Through the final presentations, students demonstrated how research-based methods and technologies can be translated into concrete XR solutions in an educational setting, with a clear connection to future industrial applications.
Peter Westman