Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are back! Lots of great projects coming out of SMARTLab in Dublin (http://www.ucd.ie/smartlab/ ). They have a large budget for doctoral students and post docs, and nine fully funded places on offer. Interesting work including simulations of living on Mars; some early material used to train up the space station astronauts, a wellbeing space tested on 300 US veterans and having positive early findings on those suffering conditions like PTSD. They are also liaising with industry experts and looking at non-military uses for drones, helping young adults with autism bond as an online team and eventually do some mountaineering together – one of the funded places is to take this work further. Check out Bos world at Terf (http://www.3dicc.com/ )

Virtual world – space centre astronauts worked here, and prep for Mars landing!