VisLab: Home to robots, virtual reality, 3-D printing
Located on the third floor of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ Nature Research Center, the Visual World Investigate Lab (aka VisLab) is highly experimental and not easily defined. It is a Makerspace, it is a public outreach tool, it is a classroom for children and teachers, it is free, it is visited by about 2,000 people a month and it is open every day.
Lab coordinators teach science using scientific visualization techniques – such as virtual reality, augmented reality and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) – and encourage kids to learn how to code and build with impromptu electronics demonstrations and formal classes. The lab boasts many different types of software and hardware technologies such as augmented reality, GIS, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, robotics, 3-D modeling and 3-D printing. The lab’s formal goal is to teach science and how science is done. The lab’s informal goal is to encourage as many children as possible to become the next great scientists and inventors by demystifying the world of science, programming and electronics.