These higher education IT thought leaders and social media personalities are making an impact across digital learning, innovation, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and campus transformation. Researchers at Louisiana State University have designed virtual reality environments in which human-robot collaboration is safe and data-rich, yielding valuable insights. Erin Brereton has written about technology, business and other topics for more than 50 magazines, newspapers and online publications. ListenPause The percentage of physical robots in industrial settings that are designed to work alongside humans has more than quadrupled since 2017, according to data from the nonprofit International Federation of Robotics. To investigate how collaborative robots can effectively communicate with people in manufacturing, medical and other settings, a number of colleges and universities have launched research efforts that involve virtual reality (VR), which may also help provide students with valuable workplace skills and experience. Vision-based training can be a powerful way to tap into the speed, consistency and other capabilities today’s robots possess, according to Jason Jamerson, director of Louisiana State University’s XR Studio research program, in which students perform software programming and other robot-related work. “We’ve got the digital twin of a humanoid robot,” Jamerson says. “You could run the simulation and be in a situation where a robot arrives at an oil rig, there’s an emergency, and it doesn’t know what to do. But within five minutes, you could train it on a week’s worth of trying different approaches.” VR Amenities Support Collaborative Robotic Research Efforts In recent years, computing power and VR advancements have facilitated broader possibilities for robotics research and use, says Nancy Amato, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society president and director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. “Before, robots in factories would typically be in cages to keep people away from them