This term at the European School of Economics’ campuses in Rome and in Florence, VEESO’s co-founders Mr. Elia D’Anna and Mr. Joseph D’Anna, gave us a glimpse into a classroom of the future through their newly created Virtual Reality (VR) headset. The set of VR goggles, first of its kind, codes our facial expressions through a complex set of infrared cameras and sensors and then projects them, in real time, onto a virtual avatar.

VEESO, in partnership with the European School of Economics (ESE), is developing a Virtual Reality technology for Education, aimed at overcoming many of the limitations of current distant-learning systems.
In conventional e-learning and video-based apps, class is confined to a small screen and as a result, teachers and subjects feel distant and less engaging. One of the main advantages of immersive technologies like VR and Immersive Audio, is the increased sense of presence. In VR, students have the feeling of sitting in a large classroom, together with their classmates and teachers.
This greater feeling of presence allows them to experience a much more engaging and effective education, very similar to live, in-person learning. Of course, VR comes with its limitations in terms of a lack of physical and emotional interaction among connected users. Nonetheless, it is a very strong and useful tool to counteract the current video-voice only communication, and is a step into the future of distance learning through augmented reality.

Our students took part in a guided interactive activity together with VEESO’s co-founders to “train-the-VR-headset” to track facial expressions.
The activity consisted in students wearing the headsets and performing a set of facial expressions such as, smiles, frowns, blinks, etc. to teach the prototype human facial expressions. ESE cordially thanks VEESO’s co-founders, Mr. Elia D’Anna and Mr. Joseph D’Anna for this incredible opportunity.

ESE is also proud to be a partner of project VEESO, which has the potential to become an important milestone in the future.

Watch this video for an interesting insight into the project: “train-the-VR-headset”

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