Rhodes professor seeks to develop less expensive virtual reality technology

Dr. Betsy Williams Sanders, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rhodes College, is on a mission to create a low-cost virtual reality system that will allow users to explore any virtual environment. Sanders won a five-year, $551,747 National Science Foundation (NSF) early career development grant last August, and she has used a portion of the money to create a 1,200-square-foot, state-of-the-art virtual reality research lab at Rhodes.
 
"A theme throughout my research has been: how can we use this technology most effectively?" says Sanders. "The idea is that in creating a virtual world we are creating a general purpose algorithm that will allow people to explore any everyday space."
 
She believes virtual reality could have a huge impact on medicine, training and education, but systems are not widely used because they are still expensive and complex to operate. The goal is to develop a broadly used virtual reality system, with potential uses including experiencing historical sites such as Pompeii, walking the streets of Paris, visiting buildings before they are built, assessing search and rescue efforts of firefighters, navigating gaming environments, exploring a model of the human heart, navigating through the ocean or even exploring outer space.

"My research is really interdisciplinary with psychology because we look at psychological techniques to evaluate how well people learn in a virtual environment," says Sanders, who has taught at Rhodes since 2007.
 
According to Sanders, with consumer-level devices like the Microsoft Kinect, Nintendo Wii components and Oculus Rift head-mounted display, the opportunity to create a high-fidelity, low-cost immersive virtual reality system is imminent.
 
"I think that because of these technologies the world of video games is going to change very soon," she says.
 
She plans to invite high school AP computer science students from the Memphis area to participate in the research. She also will use the research opportunity to continue to recruit and support women and minorities in the field of computer science.