Virtual Reality in the Service of User Participation
The normal application of Virtual Reality is to the simulation of environments which are in some way special - remote, hazardous or purely imaginary. This paper describes research and development work which changes the paradigm by simulating perfectly ordinary buildings for special people. Some of the population have some form of physical impairment - a proportion which is likely to rise in line with an ageing population. New legislation, such as the UK Disability Discrimination Act places additional responsibility on building owners to ensure adequate access for people with an impairment and this in turn will place additional responsibility on the architect. Current methods of auditing access for new building are primitive and require the auditor to interpret plans/sections of the proposed building against a checklist of requirements specific to the special need. This paper reports on progress in the use of an immersive VR facility to simulate access to buildings for two broad classes of user:

i) those with a mobility impairment

ii) those with a visual impairment

In the former case, a wheelchair motion platform has been designed which allows the wheelchair user to navigate the virtual building; a brake and motor connected to the rollers on which the wheelchair sits facilitate the effects of slope and surface resistance.
Virtual Environments for Special Needs
The normal application of Virtual Reality is to the simulation of environments, which are in some way special - remote, hazardous or purely imaginary. This paper describes research and development work which changes the paradigm by simulating perfectly ordinary buildings for special people. Some 15% of the population have some form of physical impairment — a proportion which is likely to rise in line with an ageing population. New legislation, such as the UK Disability Discrimination Act places additional responsibility on building owners to ensure adequate access for people with an impairment and this in turn will place additional responsibility on the architect. Current methods of auditing access for new building are primitive and require the auditor to interpret plans/sections of the proposed building against a checklist of requirements specific to the special need. This paper reports on progress in the use of an immersive VR facility to simulate access to buildings for two broad classes of user:i) those with a mobility impairment; ii) those with visual impairment.
Simulation and control of hybrid renewable energy system connected to the grid
This paper presents a control and simulation of hybrid renewable energy system connected to the grid. The studied system includes a photovoltaic panel, synchronous permanent magnet generator based wind turbine, and a battery for storage energy. The PV array and wind systems are connected to the common DC bus by a boost converter. The battery is connected by a bi-directional DC/DC converter, and then integrated into the AC utility grid via a common DC/AC inverter. In order to extract the maximum energy, a simulation study has been carried out according to the meteorological conditions (wind speed and variable solar irradiance) while maintaining power quality at a satisfactory level. In order to capture the maximum power, a MPPT algorithm is applied for both wind turbine and photovoltaic panel. The modeling and simulation of the whole system has been performed under Matlab/Simulink environment. The obtained results show that the current and the voltage of grid side are sinusoidal and alternative forms, and the power injected to the grid is around the power produced by the hybrid system.