With the generous support of Las Cruces-based tech company Electronic Caregiver, students and faculty at New Mexico State University will be able to conduct valuable research into aging, search scenarios, skill acquisition and motor performance in a lab featuring augmented and virtual reality technology.

The Addison Care Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Lab was unveiled Wednesday, Oct. 2, in Milton Hall, Room 155, by representatives from Electronic Caregiver and the lab’s co-directors, Phillip Post and Michael C. Hout. The lab was made possible by more than $256,000 in funding donated to NMSU by ECG and will involve NMSU students and professors conducting research using augmented and virtual reality. In all, ECG has provided gifts to NMSU totaling more than $350,000.

“There’s not a lot of labs like this nationally,” said Post, who is also the head of the Department of Kinesiology and Dance at NMSU. “This allows us to study things not a lot of other universities are able to do.”

The lab allows researchers to create fully immersive environments that can be easily manipulated in order to gather data without creating risks for test subjects.

“This will simulate real life in ways we are unable to do with any other technology,” Hout said. “A ton of researchers that do the types of studies that we do want to do this level of research, but lack the resources to do so.”

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