At HackerEarth, we regularly host hackathons and frequently discover awesome hacks that can be game-changers across industries.
Presenting Project H—one of the best hacks from the Digital India Hackathon conducted by ACM, India in association with HackerEarth.
Read on to learn more about this real-life VR application.
What is Project H?
Aimed at solving problems related to healthcare, Project H provides a virtual-reality experience of holding real products in a virtual environment. It is designed to provide medical students with realistic surgery simulation.The application, when built with the right set of hardware tools, gives the user an immersive user experience.
Medical students will greatly benefit from the simulated experience of handling organs during surgery. It will also make teaching medicine to large groups of students cost-effective.
Using the concept of experiencing the real-world in cyberspace, this hack provides a new dimension to finding solutions for different problems through virtual reality.
Components and functionalities
The two main components of Project H are the haptic glove and simulation software.
Haptic glove
The haptic glove is the most innovative part of this project. Its features are as follows:
Simulation software
The virtual reality-based simulation software gives the user a 360-degree view of 3D organs. Along with the use of a few open source 3D models of human organs, many 3D models were built using Blender.
This software simulates the shape and responses from each organ. For example, if users are holding a heart in a virtual environment, the haptic glove positions all the fingers as though they are actually holding a beating human heart, giving a realistic look and feel. The beating sensation of the heart is felt by users through the tactile feedback mechanism.
Application
The GUI of Project H has been built using Unity, C# as the programming language, and an Arduino Pro Micro (programmed in C). Serial communication has been used for communication between the hardware and software.
The application allows users to perform virtual surgeries like cutting through layers of skin using scissors and scalpels, injecting fluids, etc. Since the haptic glove is integrated, when users hold a syringe or a pair of scissors, their fingers automatically move into position by using the actuator mechanism. Therefore, users feel that they are actually holding an instrument.
Challenges
Here are some of the challenges that the team faced while building this application:
What’s next?
Project creators Gagan G. and Pratik R. have great plans in store for their project. Here are some of their ideas:
The team plans on extending the usage of the application to new and exciting fields, such as e-commerce and gaming.
Excited about VR??
Register at the UnitedByHCl hackathon
Happy Mixing Reality!!
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