Engineer with no practical experience? NED now offers a solution

Former student and now lecturer sets up media lab for working on different engineering projects

KARACHI: Have you been studying engineering for four years and have yet to gain some practical experience in your field? Worry no more as NED University of Engineering and Technology now offers a solution: The Grid.

With the aim of providing better practical experiences for students enrolled at NED University, a former student of petroleum engineering department (PED), Mohsin Yousufi, who is now a lecturer at the department, has set up a media laboratory for Virtual Reality (VR) and for working on diversified engineering projects, called 'The Grid'. The media centre allows currently enrolled students to virtually experience the work of former students of the department in their fields of work, such as oilfields and research facilities.



The facilitation room and its equipment have been funded by PED's alumni under the supervision of Yousufi. Talking about the software and applications used in the VR system, Yousufi said that the lab, which has been established at university, is the first of its kind. He explained that it has been designed for the faculty and students to work on simulation projects via the Unity 3D - a software used for creating VR environments - and is being used in various fields throughout the world.

"Students can also experience [three-dimensional] 3D (360 panoramic) shots taken by the alumni who are working in oilfields and research facilities," he said. According to him, many students who have graduated are also contributing in making the system work by sharing their field experiences. The shots help students to learn and have an experience of the fields, which they usually cannot visit while being a student, added Yousufi.

The PED alumni consist of more than 100 members from the 2004-2005 batches till the recently graduated ones of 2015. With the help of the alumni funding, the room has been renovated into 'The Grid' with expenditure of around Rs70,000.



For the future, Yousufi plans to install a 'cube projector' in September. It allows students to have a 180-degree view of any form of media.

"The VR headsets make you feel as if you are present at the site," the lecturer explained after showing a video from an oilfield near Sukkur.

The facility currently has four VR stations equipped with VR headsets along with remote controls. A tablet-based media hub is also present at the facility along with a provision to connect through computers and mobile phones. It also has the data of alumni visual files, software and simulations, which can be shared with users such as students or faculty members of any departments at any time. In addition, the big screen of the screen-mirroring interface allows you to share data from the tablet with the students.

According to Yousufi, the Grid will bring in more advanced tools to develop and promote VR culture in education and research. The emphasis is on developing the software skills of students and encouraging them to make their research projects more interactive and have an immersive learning experience. "We will add robotics in the lab in the future and have also decided to change the equipment with technologically newer ones," he said.



The technology can be used by any department in the university and is not specified for PED alone. "Students of software engineering can develop a system or an application for phones and can also design any project that can help them understand the minute details of the project," he explained.

The VR facility not only helps engineers but also can be used for Higher Education Commission (HEC) safety training. Giving an example of fire emergency, he said that members of the faculty and students can be trained via the VR facility by simulating a mock fire scene, which will help them learn how to cope with such a situation. Explaining how the technology will be helpful for students not part of the PED, he said that students will, in the future, be studying through tutorials and even backbenchers can learn through practical studies.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31^st, 2016.