It may not be an overstatement that most of us using the internet has heard of metaverse. The term ‘metaverse’ has seen to stir up global hype for business opportunities and fantasy for mankind, if not became the Oxford Word of the Year 2022 – a word reflecting the ethos, mood, or preoccupations, one that has potential of lasting cultural significance. Metaverse describes a virtual reality environment in which users interact with one another’s avatars and their surroundings in an immersive way. We are going to explore what metaverse meant for us, its fantasy and reality, and the development in the current hype. Experience of exploration and creation of the metaverse is shared and lesson learnt, and takeaway is discussed.
Dr Henry Lau is the founder of VOTANIC – a spin-off providing the best bespoke VR solutions to create a community of users to deploy VR technology to excel in their business and profession. Before retiring from his positions as Associate Dean (Innovation) in Engineering and Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering or IMSE, he led the VR research team as Director of the Human-Systems Interaction and Simulation Laboratory where they created the first interactive cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE) systems at HKU – the imseCAVE in 1998. As a pioneer in VR technology, Henry enjoys the challenges of realising crazy ideas and building systems with innovations. Over a quarter of the century, Henry and his team continue to journey through the endeavour of exploring and exploiting VR, to enable people to enjoy and live a better life in the virtual world. Henry always enjoys being with students and he is currently teaching engineering at Oxford University and developing high performance engineering team at the Remote Applications in Challenging Environment (RACE), a national lab specialising in robotics.
Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.
