A group of interns at UWC’s Innovation Hub are hoping that the augmented and virtual reality technologies they are creating can educate future nursing students.
Northern News spoke to the interns who presented a prototype of their virtual reality headset at the SA Innovation Summit powered by Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), which took place from Wednesday September 27 to Friday September 29 at the GrandWest Sun Exhibits.
The annual SA Innovation Summit is described as Africa's foremost tech gathering as well as an organisation devoted to entrepreneurs in all tech industries who are given a platform to present their ideas, according to their website.
On the day, over 4000 start-ups attended this year’s three-day summit.
The UWC Innovation Hub interns are, Shabnam Arai, Yazeed Williams, Ambeswa Bavuma and they are led by lead senior AR/VR software engineer, Izak Liebenberg.
Mr Liebenberg, who created the virtual reality demo, told Northern News that their demo presentation at the summit showcased the difference between augmented and virtual reality.
“Four out of our six interns are UWC alumni and they helped with the VR demo that we’re presenting. The design and initialisation phase of the demo took about a week to complete and the actual building took four weeks,” he said.
The virtual reality demo places the user in a virtual restaurant where they are tasked with ordering and rating a meal through the virtual headset.
One of the interns from UWC, Shabnam Arai, says her passion for augmented and virtual realities sparked her interest in joining the project at UWC’s Innovation Hub.
She graduated in 2021 at UWC with a postgraduate qualification in Immersive technologies.
“I have a history of experimenting with AR and VR as a hobby so it’s been great combining my passion with my profession. I really enjoy doing the installations too, no matter how many the hours the process takes,” she said.
“We’re hoping to use this technology for educational and training purposes. For example with virtual reality, it can be used to visualise very specific technical techniques whereas augmented reality can be used for prototyping tutorials so professors can do their lectures through that medium.
“We are also helping the Community Health Services nursing department with an augmented virtual trolley, which will give them a visual idea of what tools they will find in the digital version trolley, which they can access on their smartphones,” Mr Liebenberg said.
Fellow UWC Innovation Hub intern, Yazeed Williams said: “Hopefully in the future the nursing students can practice and learn on the augmented emergency trolley we created.”
The digital trolley was displayed via Mr Liebenberg’s tablet as he demonstrated how the users can see inside the drawers which showed the medical equipment found in these trolleys.
As an intern within the hub Ambeswa Bavuma has a cross-functional responsibility and deals with software development.
Mr Bavuma says the potential of the program they’ve developed is exciting and can be applied across many fields.
“The process is educational, and will be used in teaching and learning. It will also help medical doctors to have a virtual experience. The platform also could assist in creating prototypes as well as in the engineering sector because you can assemble and disassemble. So for learning it is going to be a nice experience,” he said.
Mr Bavuma says one of the challenges they encountered was the use of the new system.
“The current issue that we are facing is the transition from 3D to Blender but they are almost the same. So, I wouldn’t say that there is much of a challenge.
“It was quite a nice experience, challenging because it’s still new. I still need to learn the system and how to code and model but it is an environment that I would suggest everyone to join because if you can check AR is one of the emerging technological trends currently here in South Africa, it is currently top 5. So, I feel like it’s the future, it’s where the digital space is headed,” Mr Bavuma said.
Mr Liebenberg says they are planning to officially present the final product of the virtual and augmented reality technology by next year.