What could trainees or students learn from intimate, multi-angle experience of the arrest or surgical heart repair?
Thanks to a $1.94 million appropriation from Congress to Nova Southeastern University, educators, students and businesses people can soon explore the 3D production potential.
The money, secured by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, is dedicated to adding emerging technology equipment to the center’s current offerings. It is focused on the build-out of two key components, a volumetric motion capture studio and an artificial intelligence laboratory. The new elements will be available to entrepreneurs, students and a number of companies seeking to use the facilities.
The money was sourced through community project funds that were a part of a 2022 omnibus bill signed by President Biden last week. It is destined for the Davie school’s Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation.
The volumetric motion capture studio, which has yet to be installed, is a place where holographic video is produced and digital tools are applied post-production. The video is inserted into different environments where an audience can interact with holograms in augmented reality, virtual reality, and on 2D screens.
“The easiest way to explain this emerging technology is to imagine a purpose-built studio space acting as a stage that is surrounded by multiple cameras that collect video and audio content,” NSU said in a statement. “Computer vision algorithms are then used to create a textured 3D mesh per frame that is then processed and compressed into a file format capable of being played on cross-platform devices.” In other words, the studio captures and creates 360-degree images of whatever one is filming.
The technology “can be applied to any environment imaginable,” the statement added, “and is the future of simulation and scenario-based experiences” for industry, media, entertainment, fashion, sports and training.
The artificial intelligence laboratory will consist of a “smart cities” space supporting the South Florida area with technologies to be used to expand the concept, which uses various electronic and voice activation methods to gather information from people, buildings and other sources to help manage municipal operations more efficiently. The approach is designed to better manage critical functions such as traffic and transportation systems, power plants, water works, schools, libraries, hospitals and crime detection.
Besides the smart cities space, the A.I. lab will have spaces that will provide infrastructure supporting machine learning, robotics, and autonomous technologies.
In an interview Tuesday, Wasserman Schultz said she secured the money specifically for NSU.
“What it’s designed to do is help them fund the equipment for artificial intelligence spatial computing and expand their curriculum so they can bring in high-tech companies and also recruit minority students so we have diversity in the innovation space as well,” she said.
YES, IT'S IN DAVIE
Wasserman Schultz hailed the Levan center as a magnet for entrepreneurs and idea makers.
Even more remarkable:
“This center is in Davie,” she said. “it’s not Hong Kong, it’s not Silicon Valley. It’s in Davie. In a month or so they will have that equipment purchased and installed. They are ready to go. They are ready to launch that part of the center. Students and innovators can work in artificial intelligence and spatial technology right now. it’s incredible. We are going to be an even bigger magnet [for technology] because this center exists.”
The federal dollars are a big lift for an innovation center that got its start just last year.
John Wensveen, NSU’s chief innovation officer and executive director of the center, said there is plenty of demand for the studio and lab.
“We have a lineup of individuals and companies that are wanting to have access to this space for a variety of initiatives,” he said. He did not name them.
“This is a significant opportunity for the Levan center to officially plant the spatial computing and artificial intelligence flags in South Florida,” he said, adding that the studio will be the first of its kind in South Florida.
Wensveen said it will support entrepreneurs, academia, industry, and government partners, all backed by programs for new skills upskilling, and reskilling in augmented, virtual, and mixed realities.
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