A Cloud Enabled Virtual Reality Based Pedagogical Ecosystem for Green Energy

Education Pramod Abichandani, William Fligor, Eli Fromm, and Kapil Dandekar Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Drexel University

pva23@drexel.edu

Acknowledgment

NSF US IGNITE for the EAGER grant #1354572

Virtual Reality in Education

Virtual Reality in Education has been used for:

Laparo-scopic Colectomy

Particle physics

Neurosurgery

Electrical Engineering

Others

Provides a cost-effective approach to lab-based education

Wind Energy

In the United States a total of 13.1 GigaWatts (GW) of wind power was added in 2012.

1 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report, http://emp.lbl.gov/publications/2012-wind-technologies- market-report

Virtual Reality for Wind Energy Education

Learning Outcomes

We emphasized on the following

Fundamentals of windmill design

Fundamentals of wind farm design

Optimizing the placing of windmills

Fundamentals of wind farm economics

Module 1 – Airfoil Module

Relationships between blade angle and

Lift Coefficient

Drag Coefficient

Module 2 – Single Windmill

Characterizing the functional relationship between power output and wind-speed for a single windmill

Designing a windmill that can provide the maximum power output given a particular windspeed

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Module 3 – Windfarm

Characterizing the overall output of the wind farm as a function of windmill array geometry

Designing a wind farm that will maximize power output for a fixed cost

Assessment

Real-time formative assessment

Inspired by Dewey’s conception of “an experience” in education and play that should be sensitive to students’ goals and interests, we have implemented an adaptive system that capitalizes upon learners’ natural curiosities

Learners are asked questions dynamically in response to specific events that they have triggered

Design-based summative assessment

Students are allowed to explore the key parameters of the windmills

Keeping one parameter constant, students are asked to characterize the power output for a variety of parameter values

Generating graphs for key parameters

Rotor Power vs. Windspeed

Rotor Power vs. Pitch Angle of the rotor blades

Rotor Power vs. Number of rotor blades

Rotor Power vs. Length of the rotor blades

System Implementation

Technology Background

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More information available in our FIE 2014 paper

Conclusion

Conclusions and Future work

Cloud based VR provides an exciting opportunity to expand the abilities of lab environments

Future work

Expand modules to other sources of green energy

Solar

Hydroelectric

Thank You