>>funding for this program is made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. lewis b. and lousie hirschfeld cullman. sue and edgar wachenheim iii, and contributions to participating stations. >>coming up, virtual reality
training goes wireless. >>it becomes natural feeling to be in that environment. and we achieve what we call, a suspension of disbelief. >>and, the classroom of the future. >>it's higher quality than what it would have been without the
skills and the technology here. >>exploring the frontiers of science. probing cutting edge technologies. seeking answers to the big questions. welcome to scitech central. >>in east orlando, a small but
innovative company is developing new technology to make training more realistic-and hence, more effective--for military, law enforcement and first responders. >>what i'm doing right now is i am painting our training space. this is so the cameras can
calibrate each other and know what they're looking at, know the space that they're gonna be tracking. we call this our tracking volume. >>serious simulations is taking virtual reality training to the next level.
>>one of our guiding principles is to make our simulators as realistic as possible. and that realism requires them to have complete freedom of movement without wires, without artificial backpack computers. and that requires a very accurate tracking system.
>>there are eight cameras mounted on four towers. and those are all routed to the computer and the computer does software processing on the camera images in real-time. >>it tracks the human body, the positions of all the arms, hands, fingers, head, etc. and
translates that in real-time onto an avatar in the virtual world. >>the company develops simulated training exercises for people doing dangerous jobs, including soldiers and first responders. >>so the trainee sees himself by wearing a head-mounted display
as the avatar in the 3-d virtual and as he moves in the physical space he sees that avatar move identically in the virtual >>where the touch, the feedback, even the smells is possible to add into the full immersion experience. >>therefore, he becomes immersed
in that environment. it becomes natural feeling to be "suspension of disbelief." >>when they're in something real in their mind, you can often stress them out a bit. positive stress is always good for higher levels of concentration and better
training outcomes. [guns firing] >>chris's military experience proved invaluable in his new role with serious simulations. >>i spent several years in the army as an officer and one of my final assignments was managing
the creation of a video game, which came to be known to the public as "america's army". we wanted to connect with young people through this fairly new venue, a video game at the time, and create a story about the army, but by the army. >>upon returning to civilian
life, it was a natural transition to combine the latest technology in video games and military training. >>but we took this attack of very high realism, unencumbered movement, 100% real equipment in the simulator, no wires. so, those were kind of tall
orders for us in the first two years. >>chris and his team received their first patent for a technology they call "zero frame latency." >>we did that so that we didn't add any more additional latency penalties.
latency being the lag time that's involved between generating an image and its movement and having it displayed to the individual. >>so this clear box is a demonstration of a head-mounted display in a box to make it absolutely visible of what's
going on. so inside every hmd or head-mounted display, there is a display screen, one or more of those; a battery, some electronics. and because this one is wireless we also have a wireless receiver inside of this box.
>>and then the beauty of this system is that all of the electronics and tracking systems are actually in the visor. so as soon as he's finished we can actually just remove the visor and attach it to the next person, attach it to the next person.
so, it's a very, very high throughput system. >>all of these are central to making all of our technology work. creating the only wireless package for very wide field of view, high resolution displays out there.
>>the system also allow trainees to use their personal gear, adding another level of realism. >>we have a saying here that if it's real, then it's right. and weapons for both police and for military are quite individualized now. in order to allow the soldiers
to come into our simulators and train as close to reality as possible, we wanted them to come with their real weapon. not a fake toy weapon or a simulated weapon. we also allow the trainees to wear 100% of their real combat gear with some overlays for the
simulation. >>chris knows the value of real world experience first hand and employs individuals who are on the same page. >>i like employing veterans just because we have a common background, common experience, and i like to give back a bit by
helping their transitions into civilian life. there's lots of opportunities. lots of careers within the military that translate very well into civilian sector jobs. and resetting your mind a bit and resetting your vocabulary, and resetting your expectations
as you exit the military can make it quite successful. >>the center for the intrepid in san antonio, texas provides patients with state of the art technology for amputee care, helping them return to their physical, psychological and emotional selves.
>>the most severely wounded service women and men, are brought here, to the center for the intrepid, for rehabilitation. first lieutenant john arroyo was hit in his throat, and shoulder, during a shooting spree by a fellow serviceman, at fort hood
on april 2, 2014. >>everybody that saw me knew that they had witnessed a miracle. they knew that the man that the they were treating should have been dead. >>he was told he would never be able to talk again, or use his
arm, but he proved everyone wrong. >>my recovery's been just nothing but miraculous. and since that time being at the center for the intrepid is nothing more than miraculous also. >>the center for the intrepid is
an outpatient rehabilitation center which opened in january of 2007. it was donated by the generous 600-thousand americans, and they donated money to the intrepid fallen heroes fund. lots of things going on in the building on any given day.
so, besides our main mission of rehabilitation of our most severely wounded service members, one of our other missions is research. this is our military performance lab that we have done in the last four years, over $40 million dollars of research.
>>in this lab, patient movement is analyzed, using 34 motion capture cameras installed around the room. and down the hall, a virtual reality rehabilitation program so advanced, there are only 3 in the world. >>this is the caren system and
it's a computer assisted rehabilitation environment. it's a 300-degree dome, so short of a door, they're pretty much enclosed inside this virtual environment. so you see the treadmill is tipping there, and a patient who as a right leg amputation or as
they say above the knee amputation, he's learning to walk, and he's learning to deal with the adjustments of the ground changing underneath him. >>as part of their rehabilitation, many patients will need to be fitted with one, or more, prosthetics, an area
that's had tremendous advancements in the last few >>we do all of our work here. we do virtually all our fabrication in house. a couple of things that have really made advancements--it's all microprocessor controlled, so it's all blue tooth enabled
and we can use laptops and there are apps also. users can actually program themselves do some of their own adjustments now. if someone has severe ankle pain or has lost function of the ankle, they don't have push off, this gives artificial push off.
even though it looks the simplest, it's one of the primary developments in the last 5 years. this gives the function back. >>some of the new technologies that we've been using in addition to new prosthetics is a way of actually enhancing the
way people walk around. >>one of those technologies is a segway. when someone is using a prosthetic, it takes a lot of energy to walk long distances. >>segway, they can stand, be at eye level and talk with us instead of being talked down to
in a wheelchair. it's freed the patient up, getting them out of their wheelchairs quicker and longer, and making their quality of life much better. >>another innovation is a recent adaptation to a standing, regular segway.
it's called an "ally chair" - placed on a very complicated seat platform. >>with this, noel is able to drive his segway just with body weight. >>we do the best we can in terms of getting somebody's function back to where they want to be.
>>all those medics and surgeons and leaders, they all made the right decisions. they put me in the hands of world renowned physicians and the number 1 facility and because of that i have a quality of life today. >>so i.d.e.a.s.
stands for the integrated display and environmental awareness system. and it's a project that nasa's working on where we're trying to develop a smart glasses system that can be used by our ground operations technicians here on earth, but also in the future by
our astronauts up in space. so, the technology basically, it's a computer and it's displaying the computer's information on glasses. >>the hardware that you see here consists of the heads up display, which basically is used to show the information.
from the cpu up to the users line of sight. >>followed by that we have the helmet or the hardhat, which contains the processes unit as well as different camera systems, infared, and regular camera. >>people working in factories,
people working on an oil rig, people working in the middle of a national forest. this type of technology can be helpful for them. they could get instant feedback directly from the expert engineer out and in a remote location.
>>it's very exciting to work on this project because of technology is on the forefront of what's going on in an industry. and it's even doubly exciting knowing that it's gonna help nasa achieve its goal of sending humans far beyond our planet.
i look forward to the day when we have humans walking on mars and they'll be using our technology. so it's really exciting to be able to be a part of this. >>according to the u.s. department of education, only about 1 in 7 high school seniors
are interested in a stem career. a new jersey museum is trying to change that by bringing science to life for students. andrea vasquez reports. >>walk through liberty science center's 12 exhibition halls and you won't see a single "do not touch" sign.
>>this is a totally interactive science center. we have something called a touch tunnel, where you're deprived of your sense of sight, you're in the dark, it's a maze that you have to navigate. we have a lot of experiences like that.
>>liberty science center is among hundreds of centers and museums around the world that aim to make stem accessible to the public, especially budding young scientists. >>we want to inspire kids, because the best way to go into the sciences is not because it's
drilled into you but because you have some experience when you're a kid that turns you on to it. in my case, my neighbor let me look through a telescope when i was seven and i saw the rings of saturn and the craters of the moon, and after that i was hooked on science forever.
that's what we try to do here. >>the idea for the liberty science center was born in the 1970s, and more than 20 years later, in 1993, the center opened its doors. in the first 12 years, some nine million people visited. the facility now averages
600-thousand visits annually. about 200,000 students visit the liberty science center each year, and they have free reign of the exhibits, from crawling through the pitch-black touch tunnel to walking the beam in the skyscraper exhibit. >>there's so many things that
visitors can do, and not just looking at stuff on the wall, but getting down and dirty and participating. >>in the 300-thousand square foot center, guests can see the effects of erosion, learn about their immune system, and experiment with different forms
of energy. >>you're learning but not in the conventional sense where someone's forcing you to read a textbook and, you know, you have to do this because it's good for you. here you do it because you're having fun and if we can
increase that sense of excitement and that "wow" factor that science brings to me and we can impart that to a new generation, we're going to have more men and women going into the sciences and filling those jobs that industry needs. >>in the past decade, the number
of stem jobs has grown at three times the rate of non-stem jobs, and 80 percent of the country's fastest-growing occupations require math and science skills. >>we have 2 million jobs in america, entry-level jobs, that can't be filled because we aren't turning out enough kids
from school - from both high school and college - with the scientific or technological chops that private industry needs. >>the center also offers professional development for stem teachers from kindergarten through high school.
the teacher workshops cover subject matter as well as methods to engage students, extending liberty science center's reach beyond its walls and into classrooms. >>the mission of this place is to get learners of all ages excited about the promise, the
power and the pure fun of science and technology. and really to turn the next generation of kids on to >>these days most smart phones rely on capacitive touch screens where your finger
becomes a key part of the electronics. there are different kinds of capacitive touch screens and they can vary from device to device. but one basic design
is a sheet of glass containing a grid of hair-thin lines of a conductive metal. the grid lines in one direction are called the driving lines,
which provide a constant electric current. and the lines in the other direction are called the sensing lines and detect this so the next time
you're texting on a smart phone or scrolling through internet forums on a tablet, just remember you're actually part of the electronics
that make it work. >>tech devices can sometimes be a distraction for students. but tampa prep, a private middle and high school near florida's west coast, is using technology to make the classroom experience more effective for both students and teachers.
>>this classroom at tampa prep near downtown tampa went through a transformation last summer at the middle school division here. their classrooms were remodeled and outfitted with the latest >>well, look. i notice it says 0-2 and then i see it says 2-2.
why is that? >>we want every kid to have the same visual experience, so we want to have multiple displays in the classroom, so that you can be at this end of this classroom or this end or over here and see the same content. in the auditory aspect, all the
teachers have lapel mikes that are specifically made to do voice amplification and not only just amplification, but clarity. >>there is no solution for it. >>in the collaborative aspect with the steel case furniture, very mobile. we can on the fly change the way
the classroom is laid out, and then the glass. this used to all be a wall here, and now we've put as much glass as possible in to kind of open up the space, bring in as much natural light as possible. >>every student also has an ipad that is an integral part of the
learning process. >>then we had to realize that we wanted to have a way to get content from the teacher to the student, backwards and forwards, electronically. so we have a learning management system that we use called haiku. >>although there were months of
planning, the implementation of the new classrooms came quickly. >>the training was difficult because the construction was done in the summer, so when they came back, they were in this environment immediately. >>i didn't know if i'd be able to learn everything in time, but
it was amazingly easy. >>pat embry now teaches algebra with many new high-tech tools at her disposal. >>now i have screens on three sides of the room. i can have three different things on the screen. i can walk around and look at
the student's work. we can talk about something that's on one of the three screens. they can turn their desks to look at whatever screen we're talking about. there is no back of the room. i've thrown out the seating
chart. the students come in and sit wherever they would like and the seating arrangement changes throughout the class depending on what the activity is we're doing. but the really powerful part is when the students project their
work on the board. who else is ready? joshua, there you are. let's put yours up. we don't care if the problem is always right or wrong. we're just looking to see how the problems work, and we learn from our mistakes.
>>here in laura pereira's eighth grade spanish class, the multiple display environment has opened many options for her as a teacher. >>esta bien con el vocabulario de frequencia? i could have information that's useful to them up on one or two
screens and point out to them, you know, if you're feeling really comfortable with the material, look at this board. if you're still struggling with the vocab, i have the vocab on display in the back, or if the verbs are still challenging you, they are on the other screen,
so, you know, really allowing kids to realize that there are multiple sources and points of information. >>classroom participation for students now includes being able to display their presentation right from their ipad, or they can walk up to a screen to demo
their work. >>since both walls are all completely writable, that does leave a lot more space for them to write, and they love to write on the board. something that i've realized, oh, i can have eight students go up and write at the same time on
the board and that's not a problem. >>and the movable desk has made the learning environment even more powerful. >>they love to be next to each other, and they like to get as close as they can to the displays.
>>we want it to be seamless where this is not technology, this is just learning. this is the way you teach. it's another tool. >>students here also use the technology to create reports. >>for different classes, we've had to do video reports or
different presentations. using the skills i've learned here has absolutely helped with doing those presentations, using the cameras, the microphones. it's higher quality than what it would have been without the >>and reed forehand is part of a team of students who created
auto-adjusting headphones. >>our goal was to have headphones that when you changed ambient environmental sound levels that they would adjust the noise volume without you having to manually touch your phone. once we designed the circuit, we
put it into the cnc machine and created our first prototype circuit and once that worked, we decided to condense the circuit to make it much smaller and much more manageable in line with the headphones. we 3d printed an enclosure for it and actually put it in the
>>the enclosure was designed with a 3d cad software. >>we started with just a simple cube, and we slowly extruded away the inside of the cube to make the circuit that we designed fit inside. and the cool thing about autodesk is that you can
manipulate images to view them from every angle. so we could check the box to make sure it fit every design specification we needed. >>this is james riley's advance precalculus class in the senior high division of the school. the online management software
the school uses for all students allows him to run a flipped class. >>the flipped classroom is when you do your homework in class and you take your lectures at home.
>>he makes these podcasts, which is his voice talking and explaining the lesson while he writes on his ipad and as we watch these videos, we're learning the lesson. >>establish the cosine curve. >>since the students watch the lectures at home, during class,
they're able to work directly with their teacher. >>and as soon as you hit that problem that you have a question on, you can go straight to the teacher right then. he can tell you what is happening and answer your question, and then you can go
and finish the problem. >>another good part is that we work in groups so that i don't even have to ask him all the time. i can ask someone else in the classroom to help me out. >>flipped classrooms, active learning environments, computer
and engineering design classes-for tampa prep, it's a way of life. >>there's a lot of opponents to integrating technology, that it takes away from face time and we need less digital and more human interaction and i think you saw today that there's more human
interaction than ever. >>it's fun to come in every day and really think of new ways to use this technology. it's added something to teaching and learning in the classroom that i never thought was possible. >>we're looking for engaging,
interactive environments where our students can be creative and innovative, to find those future entrepreneurs and expose them to things that they can flourish with. >>that's all for this week on scitech central, thanks for watching.
join us next week for more stories from the frontiers of
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