Simulation Driven Virtual Reality: A Framework for Large Scale Virtual Simulation Lacey Duckworth – Ph.D. Student February 16, 2008 Tentative Committee: Dr. Strelzoff (Chair), Dr. Sulbaran, Dr. Seyfarth, Dr. Wang, Dr. Zhang

Objective To obtain your feedback on an early version of my Ph.D. prospectus. Form my Ph.D. committee

Agenda Introduction Problem ◦ Background ◦ Preliminary Study ◦ Difficulty of Problem ◦ Applicable Experience Objective Methodology Expected Results and Impact

Problem A robust and reusable communication method does not exist to connect external simulation languages with the compelling and accessible client-server Virtual Reality Environments.

Background Creating Large Scale Virtual Simulations is very time consuming and the result is not very reusable.

Preliminary Study 200 Hours Code is not modular, extendable, or object oriented Pascagoula example 46 major rigs x 10 more complex than sample x 200 hours 96,000 hours

Why Is This So Difficult? 1 Second Life TM and all similar client- server VR environments such as Multiverse TM and OpenSL TM were never intended for large-scale software development. Ideal: object-oriented language for "top-level" process rigs where all instances and specialized rigs could be easily derived.

Why Is This So Difficult? 2 Computer Scientists are not Refinery Plant Operators. Very hard to “get it right” from conversations and schematics. Ideal: High-level behavioral simulation environment in which programmers would contribute a first version and plant operators and consultants could iteratively "get the details right” largely on their own.

Example of “Communication” Sketch received from consultant and interpretation of the atmospheric distillation process.

Why Is This So Difficult? 3 Second Life was not intended for large scale computations. With larger numbers of numerical processes, servers bog down and performance degrades. Ideal: an external simulation language that could run independently on a dedicated server providing scalable performance as the size of the simulation grew.

Applicable Experience 1 Our research group has a lot of experience and success building bridges in and out of the environment.

Applicable Experience 2 LabVIEW is a popular Instrumentation simulation (USM has a license) 1 - Object Oriented – Hierarchal 2 - Well known among Chemical Engineers 3 - Reasonable performance – multi-core adaptive

Objective Step1: Define a communication language protocol schema between a simulation language and a client-server Virtual Reality Environment. Step 2: Test the robustness of the developed communication protocol. Step 3: Develop a generalized framework to provide reuse of the communication protocol. Restating the Problem A robust and reusable communication method does not exist to connect the external simulation languages with the compelling and accessible client-server Virtual Reality Environments.

Methodology Step 1: Define Communication Protocol ◦ Qualitative - Content Analysis  Qualitative – describes a schema, flexible guidelines, produces code  Content Analysis – identify specific characteristic of a body of material Step 2: Test the Robustness ◦ Quantitative – Action Research  Quantitative – prove if theory is correct, numerical data collected, numerical data presented.  Action Research – Did developing this software decrease time Step 3: Develop Reuse Framework ◦ Qualitative – Content Analysis  Qualitative – describe a framework, written results  Content Analysis – identify specific characteristic of a body of material

Methodology (Cont.) Step 1: Define Communication Protocol between: ◦ Finite state machine definition of generalize simulation language  ( Σ 1,S 1,s 01, δ 1,F 1 ) ◦ Event-driven state machine definition of the client-server virtual reality environment  ( Σ 2,S 2,s 02, δ 2,F 2 ).

Methodology (Cont.) Step 2: Test the robustness of the developed communication between the two protocols ◦ Virtual Environment  SecondLife TM ◦ Simulation Environment  LabVIEW TM ◦ Refinery or other Large Scale Construction Project

Methodology (Cont.) Step 3: Develop a generalized framework to provide reuse of the communication protocol ◦ Provide code reusability. ◦ Tested through small experiment of new methodology of reuse vs. traditional.

Expected Results and Impact (1) A communication language protocol schema between a simulation language and a client-server Virtual Reality Environment.

Expected Results and Impact (2) Communication between virtual reality environment SecondLife TM and LabVIEW TM.

Expected Results and Impact (3) Experimentally tested framework to provide reusable simulation driven virtual environment components

Thank you for your participation.

Questions