Virtual Operating Room

Closed Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Master Ph.D. Project Thesis Industry Cooperation

Background

At SIEMENS Healthcare we design and develop products for an environment with challenging requirements regarding appearance and UX of our user interfaces. Our designers have to understand how our design decisions impact the context of use. They need to discuss and sell their vision to product managers as well as customers.

“Does this robot arm fit into the environment of the operating room?” “What if the surgeon has to move the OR light?” A lot of questions need to be answered and possible solutions need to be adapted until they work.

Finally product trainers want to understand how the newest products work in order to provide training material to the customers. Currently they often use intermediate development states as well as the final product as a base. This means that preparation is possible only very late in the development process. How can we make it possible to have a realistic experience of our future products? So realistic that we can create a feeling for quality and interaction between several integrated components?

Tasks

The goal of your work basically is to answer the following questions with the support of virtual reality:

• How can human beings experience interactive systems and their dimensions in a virtual environment so they can evaluate its quality?
• Is it possible to mix hardware user interfaces with virtual reality in a way that users can have a real life experience (e.g. haptic feedback) in a virtual space?
• Which infrastructure is needed to enable designers to easily get their 3D designs into a virtual space so that they can experience the implications of their design decisions?

Prerequisites

• You are studying computer sciences, game design or a similar subject in the field of “Human-Machine-Interface”
• You already have knowledge about computer graphics and real-time data visualization
• You have fundamental programming skills (e.g. with C++ or C#)
• Ideally you have already some experience in programming 3D environments / games with a framework like Unity
• Most important: You are really passionate and curious about the opportunities virtual reality provides and you want to find out what you can achieve with them

Cooperation

SIEMENS Healthcare is one of the biggest providers of healthcare technology. We have a broad portfolio of products and services around healthcare to enable more people to have a long, healthy and happy life. Within the division of “Advanced Therapies” we enable our customers in cardiology, interventional radiology and radiation therapy as well as regular surgeries to benefit from innovative products. For example our “Artis Pheno”, launched at the end of 2016.

Be a part of our multi-disciplinary team of user researchers, designers and software engineers. Use the full support of this team to create something great and participate in an exciting project by writing your meaningful master thesis or dissertation.

Cooperation Partners

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg