AESO VR Control Room
The Alberta Electrical System Operators (AESO) operates and manages the power grid in Alberta, Canada. Part of their responsibilities is to maintain a 24/7 Control Centre to ensure that millions of Albertans have power when they need it. In collaborations with AESO, we developed the AESO Immersive Control Room, an Extended Reality (XR) application that explores how information from the current control room can be replicated and reimagined in a virtual environment.
Features
Visualizations
Our app allows users to spawn, view, and interact with six visualizations that were created based on real data provided by AESO. Out of the six visualizations, four were replicas of preexisting elements found in the control room. With the remaining two map-based visualizations, we were able to show the locations of different substations and powerlines, the direction of power flow, elevation, and extreme weather location on a 3D map.
Interactions
We provide users with a main menu to navigate to different features of our application. From here, users can toggle between the visualization, workspace, and setting tab, which shows more options on the right side of the menu based on the current selection. Outside of the menu, users can move visualizations by grabbing with one hand, as well as scale and rotate by grabbing with two hands.
Workspaces
Users can choose to save the current layout of the visualizations by navigating to the workspace menu and clicking the save icon. This will take a screenshot of the workspace, which is then placed as a tab on the menu. Clicking on any of the workspace icons will update the current environment to match the corresponding workspace.
Time ScrubbingÂ
Our application allows users to navigate to different points in time within a 24 hours period. Also, we provide users with the capabilities to change the playback speed of the data.
Cross Platform
Currently, our application can be deployed to the HTC VIVEs, the Oculus Quest, and the Microsoft HoloLens.
Credit
Special thanks to everyone who helped create this project!
Developed by: Steven Vi, Bryson Lawton, Tarishi Upadhyay, Dianna Yim, and Frank Maurer
Special Thanks to: Bill Salem and Tiago Silva da Silva
