Utilizing Virtual Reality to Support the ASCE UESI Student Surveying Competition

Abstract Surveying engineering is a major with strong professional and historical ties to civil engineering. However, compared to civil engineering, surveying has a lower public profile, and many first-year engineering students are not aware of surveying as an option, what the major entails, and how surveying contributes to engineering projects. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute (UESI) Surveying Competition organizes an annual surveying competition for Civil Engineering programs. The educational and professional goals include a recognition of the importance of basic surveying principles to all civil engineering projects. The competition is an innovative and interesting way to engage civil engineering students with surveying engineering and increase the awareness of surveying in civil engineering institutions. Due to the travel challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 UESI Surveying Competition was held virtually. The UESI Surveying and Geomatics Division in collaboration with University Name Hidden decided to utilize immersive and interactive virtual reality technology to simulate the field component in the student competition. Thanks to technological advancements of Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) in the past 10 years, immersive virtual reality technology has found widespread application in education. The SurReal (Surveying Reality) software that was used for the competition has a realistic virtual environment based on the University Name Hidden campus and a realistic differential leveling instrument. The software simulates all major components of the differential leveling process. This is the first national surveying competition with an integrated virtual reality component. This paper will discuss the virtual reality component, the approach followed to adapt the existing SurReal software from the Oculus Rift to the Oculus Quest 2 platform, the challenges in providing the necessary hardware to the participating universities from different parts of the US, and the feedback received by the students participating in the competition.