3D virtual world remote laboratory to assist in designing advanced user defined DAQ systems based on FlexRIO and EPICS

iRIO-3DLab is a platform devised to assist developers in the design and implementation of intelligent and reconfigurable FPGA-based data acquisition systems using EPICS and FlexRIO technologies. Although these architectures are very powerful in defining the behavior of DAQ systems, this advantage comes at the price of greater difficulty in understanding how the system works, and how it should be configured and built according to the hardware available and the processing demanded by the requirements of the diagnostics. In this regard, Virtual Reality technologies are highly effective at creating rich training scenarios due to their ability to provide immersive training experiences and collaborative environments. The designed remote laboratory is based on a 3D virtual world developed in Opensim, which is accessible through a standard free 3D viewer. Using a client-server architecture, the virtual world connects with a service running in a Linux-based computer executing EPICS. Through their avatars, users interact with virtual replicas of this equipment as they would in real-life situations. Some actions can be used to simulate the behavior of a real system to enhance the training process, while others can be used to make real changes remotely in the physical system.