VR Interactive Feature of HTML5-based WebVR Control Laboratory by Using Head-mounted Display

Abstract

The development of web-based online laboratory for engineering education has made big progress in recent years with state-of-the-art technologies. In order to further promote the effectiveness within an online virtual environment, the virtual reality (VR) interactive feature of WebVR Control laboratory based on HTML5 is presented in this paper. The educational objective is to assist the students or researchers to conduct a realistic and immersive experiment of control engineering with a head-mounted display (HMD) equipped. The implementation of the VR technique mainly relies on the Three.js graphic engine based on Web Graphics Library (WebGL) which has been supported by most of the mainstream web browsers in their latest version without a plugin embedded. At the end of the paper, the ball and beam system is taken as an example to illustrate the whole operational approach of the novel VR experiment in detail. While such a VR interactive feature hasn’t been integrated into some of the current web-based online laboratories, the technical solution could be inspirational for them.