Virtual Lab: Discovering through Simulation

This paper sets out the design and the implementation of a Virtual Tutor. This Virtual Tutor is an avatar that “lives ” in a distributed virtual reality application dedicated to practical activities in electronics: circuit design and simulation. The simulation of the circuit is done using the SPICE programme that is a general-purpose circuit simulation programme for non-linear dc, non-linear transient, and linear ac analyses. The implementation is based on VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and Java as languages and Cortona VRML plug-in from ParallelGraphics. The distribution of virtual worlds is obtained using DeepMatrix as environment server. Teachers use Concept Maps to design the behaviour of the Virtual Tutor. The control of the avatar is done using JESS (Java Expert System Shell). We describe in this paper a method that enables the creation of a Knowledge Base from a Concept Map