Omar Wael from Egypt built a robot when he was nine. At 13, he is working to create a virtual world where his fellow students can attend classes.
June 30, 2022 / 09:01 AM IST
Omar Wael, 13-year-old Egyptian developer, with a VR device at his home in Alexandria.
Big corporations around the world are engaged in efforts to build metaverse, and so is a 13-year-old boy from Egypt.
Inspired by Ready Player One, a science adventure film from Stephen Spielberg, Omar Wael began building his own virtual social world, which could allow students to attend classes in augmented reality, Euronews reported.
Wael also hopes his metaverse, named “The Other World”, will help scientists conduct experiments in the virtual space.
“This saves the environment and reduces traffic,” the teenager was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.
‘My project focuses on wearing the gloves, the vest and headset which take you into the virtual reality world where you can go to school, work or a government institution,’ says Omar Wael, an Egyptian teen who wants to build his own version of the metaverse pic.twitter.com/qjZJxRBXnY
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 27, 2022
“Researchers who work on chemical experiments won’t have to buy expensive chemical material, they can simply carry out their experiments in a virtual lab in a simulation of what happens in reality exactly,” he added.
The teen, who created a robot when he was nine, is now writing a software for his ambitious metaverse project. He has already built a sensory vest and gloves using his mother’s old clothes.
Wael’s work has been recognised globally and at home. He is now hoping to obtain funds with which his project can progress.
Many organisations around the world are hopping on the metaverse bandwagon.
Technology giants like Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and Microsoft have even formed a group for the development of metaverse industry standards. It is called the Metaverse Standards Forum.
The group had said in a statement last week that all organsations would have free access to it.
“The Metaverse Standards Forum provides a venue for cooperation between standards organizations and companies to foster the development of interoperability standards for an open and inclusive metaverse, and accelerate their development and deployment through pragmatic, action-based projects,” it said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
