IVE Virtual Intern Program (VIP)

This project involves assessing built environments, particularly in urban centres or in city centres to determine what urban vistas are important to protect and the future appearance of a skyline. It is envisaged that the tool could also consider solar access in terms of how it affects existing development, green spaces and existing roof top solar systems. The project would be in several stages: the first stage would be a literature review to determine important principles and concepts associated with views and visual amenity to be protected in the city; the second stage would then be to determine what the Tool would do in terms of its purpose, design principles, capabilities and features; the third stage would be to develop the tool itself (whether that be in an Augmented Reality format or map overlay outputs); and the final stage would be a case study demonstrating application of the tool. The case study would most likely be of Adelaide's city centre but it could also include another Australian capital city. The project would recommend planning policies for protecting urban view sheds, based on the research findings in applying the Tool.

Project Duration: 6 months

Industrialised Construction (IC) integrates intelligent manufacturing, automation, and prefabrication techniques to streamline the design, production, transportation, and assembly of building components. By leveraging offsite construction, modular systems, and pre-assembly methods, IC offers a transformative approach to addressing housing shortages by delivering high-quality, cost-effective, and energy-efficient homes at an accelerated pace.
This project aims to explore and optimise IC methodologies to enhance housing affordability and sustainability in Australia. The intern will conduct a literature review on global best practices in IC and analyse cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and environmental performance of various IC systems. Using parametric design, Building Information Modeling (BIM), and performance simulation tools, they will develop a framework for optimising IC workflows, identifying the most viable strategies for rapid, scalable, and sustainable housing solutions.
Collaboration with architects, engineers, and industry experts will ensure that the proposed solutions align with real-world construction challenges and policy frameworks.

Project Duration: 6 months

This project aims to develop an innovative Virtual Reality (VR) tool that enables users to fully immerse themselves in a building design environment, make real-time modifications, and instantly visualize the impact on key building performance metrics, particularly thermal comfort, lighting quality, and acoustics. The intern will prototype an interactive VR design interface using platforms such as Unity, Unreal Engine, or ShapesXR, alongside design and analysis tools like Rhino + Grasshopper + Honeybee or SketchUp + Sefaira. This tool will facilitate real-time design modifications and performance analysis within an immersive VR environment.
Collaboration with architects, building scientists, and UI/UX designers will be key to refining the tool's functionality, ensuring seamless integration of design adjustments with real-time environmental feedback, and optimizing usability for design professionals.

Project Duration: 6 months

Industrialised Construction (IC) integrates intelligent manufacturing, automation, and prefabrication techniques to streamline the design, production, transportation, and assembly of building components. By leveraging offsite construction, modular systems, and pre-assembly methods, IC offers a transformative approach to addressing housing shortages by delivering high-quality, cost-effective, and energy-efficient homes at an accelerated pace.
This project aims to explore and optimise IC methodologies to enhance housing affordability and sustainability in Australia. The intern will conduct a literature review on global best practices in IC and analyse cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and environmental performance of various IC systems. Using parametric design, Building Information Modeling (BIM), and performance simulation tools, they will develop a framework for optimising IC workflows, identifying the most viable strategies for rapid, scalable, and sustainable housing solutions.
Collaboration with architects, engineers, and industry experts will ensure that the proposed solutions align with real-world construction challenges and policy frameworks.

Project Duration: 6 months

To address the challenge of insufficient analytical and mathematical skills among students in understanding and visualising 3D structures from 2D drawings, the integration of immersive learning technologies has become a key focus in teaching and learning construction management in online learning environments. Therefore, in collaboration with relevant experts, two VR models will be developed for roof and wall construction. A similar application has been created previously, and we would like to improve this version and extend its capabilities to include a better user experience.

Project Duration: 3 months

The aim of this project is to create a complete interactive Fluid Mechanics laboratory experiment in augmented reality. The initial 360-degree virtual walkthrough exists. Further work will be done based on this virtual tour. The next step is to convert this into a functional VR-based laboratory activity (Virtual experiment). This includes creating the scenario of the lab instrument and making it an interactive activity (virtual experiment) so that students can interact with the virtual instrument through a web-based platform (or any other suitable platform) to simulate the experiment. A set of real data from the real experiment will be provided to link with this virtual experiment, allowing students to record and work on the data as if it were done in a real-life laboratory experiment. This laboratory physically exists at UniSA Mawson Lakes campus.

Project Duration: 3 months

This project explores how Virtual Reality could be used to help train staff working with dementia patients in a care facility, especially in improving staff empathy ability. The intern will conduct scenario design. They will also use Maya, ShapesXR, or Unity to produce some concept interactive VR scenarios as demons. They will participate in remote meetings to get feedback.

This project aims to design VR virtual scenarios as a part of the VR training tool to show daily care activities to improve caregivers' empathy and learn care knowledge more efficiently by allowing them to better understand the symptoms and behaviors of people with dementia by incorporating VR interactive elements and user experience design components.

Project Duration: 3 months

This project explores how Extended Reality (XR) and tangible interfaces can assist with emotion regulation and support.
The intern will conduct background research on previous studies and projects that integrate XR technologies and tangible interfaces (e.g., haptic feedback, physical interactive objects) for emotional wellbeing. They will organise and manage the literature review process, employing qualitative data analysis methods to identify key themes and synthesise findings. Additionally, the intern will engage in idea generation and sketching to visualise potential design concepts for future developments.

Project Duration: 6 months

This study examines the use of AI-generated personas in qualitative research data collection. The project involves interacting with AI personas and analysing the data using a predefined protocol. It also includes statistical analysis, creation of result graphs, and contribution to writing the research paper based on the findings.

Project Duration: 6 months

Data physicalization is the process of transforming data into physical, tangible objects or structures to help people explore, understand, and interact with information in new ways. Instead of traditional digital or visual representations like charts or graphs, data physicalization uses physical materials to encode data, making it possible to perceive information through touch, movement, and spatial interaction. This is a new area of research and we are looking for new and imaginative data physicalisation ideas that help share and communicate healthcare data with the general public.

Project Duration: 6 months

Lowcost prototpying tool survey and case study for AR/VR ideation (design prototyping).

Project Duration: 3 months

This project aims to analyze and evaluate existing data used in smart grid control rooms. Processing massive amounts of data with existing data visualization solutions includes complexity related to network representation in space and time. By identifying current limitations, especially in predicting human behavior, the project will suggest improvements to enhance data interpretation and decision-making processes. The ultimate goal is to create more efficient and user-friendly data visualizations to improve operational efficiency in smart grid control environments.

Project Duration: 6 months

This project will involve developing a web tool to explore the relationships between authors using the Elsevier/Scopus/Google Scholar API.

Project Duration: 6 months

This project explores how Vision Large Language Models can enhance AR and user interaction. The intern will research Vision LLMs and AR, develop and train Vision LLMs in Python, and deploy them on AR/VR devices to provide users with AI-generated visual cues.

Project Duration: 6 months

The project will examine mapping gestural (hand movements) and other modalities to transform and manipulate architectural geometries. The project aims to use software such as OpenCV and the Unity game engine to map, track and alter visual parameters of a building's form based on a user's body movements to compare to traditional input methods (i.e. sketching or 3D modelling designs). For example, waving could twist the building's geometry and clapping could condense the building's shape. The project will start by investigating the manipulation of basic 3d shapes (boxes and spheres) before moving on to more complex shapes (i.e. building facades and interiors).

Project Duration: 6 months

The project will investigate using temperature as a variable to encode data. We envisage that temperature can be perceived actively (i.e. via a dynamic temperature control device) or passively via perception (i.e. in a static representation, such as colour, materiality, and texture). The project seeks to use 3D printing and electronics to simulate temperature effects as a meaningful way to encode data. For example, temperature could be used to map mood on a geological map. The research seeks to determine if temperature can be used to map discrete and/or continuous data to increase engagement and comprehension of datasets compared to traditional data visualisation. The project will start by investigating different datasets and their applicability towards temperature. Prototypes and demonstrations will then be developed via CAD software (i.e. Blender, Fusion 360). The final product will have the opportunity to be showcased during IVE events and UniSA Open Day and potentially as an installation for the Museum of Discovery (MOD).

Project Duration: 6 months

Conversational analysis is one technique used for evaluating collaborative Augmented Reality (AR) systems. The goal of the project is to complete a detailed conversation analysis of audio recordings and machine-produced transcripts from a collaborative AR experiment (This part uses AI, Artificial Intelligence, using machine learning). The transcripts require some tidying up, including speakers to be correctly identified and timestamps of all spoken words, including any overlapping speech. The conversational analysis involves identifying the types of sentences and phrases used. This information will be used to generate statistics about the conversational analysis.

Project Duration: 3-6 months (This can be adjusted based on project scope and student availability).

For more opportunities in the Empathic Computing Lab, based out of the University of Auckland, please click on this Link.