A virtual laboratory combined with biometric authentication and 3D reconstruction

Virtual laboratories are used in professional skill development, online education, and corporate training. There are several aspects that determine the effectiveness and popularity of virtual laboratories: (i) the benefits brought to the users compared with those provided by traditional physical hands-on laboratories, (ii) the cost of adopting a virtual laboratory which includes the costs of creating the virtual environment and developing virtual experiments, and (iii) the operation which includes the communication between trainers and trainees, the authentication and remote proctoring of the trainees, etc. At present, the procedures of building and operating a virtual laboratory are still tedious, time-consuming and resource-intense, thus considerably limiting the potential applications and popularization of virtual laboratories. In this paper, a virtual laboratory built and operated with 3D reconstruction and biometric authentication is introduced and an evaluation of the feasibility of the proposed approaches is presented. 3D reconstruction techniques are used to create the virtual environment of this virtual laboratory. The traditional tools used to survey the real world are replaced by a hand-held camera. Then, all of the information acquired by this hand-held camera is processed. Finally, the virtual environment of the virtual laboratory is generated automatically in real-time. The biometric authentication techniques (here facial recognition techniques) are used to create a remote proctor. The general logic and basic algorithms used to enable biometric authentication and remote proctoring are described. When using this virtual laboratory, the students log in by capturing their face with a camera. While performing a laboratory exercise, they sit in front of the camera and the virtual laboratory system monitors their facial expressions and the motion of their head in order to identify suspicious behaviors. Upon detection of such suspicious behaviors, the system records a video for further analysis by the laboratory administrator.