HP Innovation Journal Issue 08: Winter 2017 | Page 31

I magine a future when one million people call the red planet home. Together with NVIDIA and other partners, HP has launched HP Mars Home Planet, an exciting call for global collaboration to solve the chal- lenges of urbanization using virtual reality (VR). Establishing human civilization on Mars, which happens to be about 225 million km away, will be no small feat. And yet NASA has identified it as our best option to support human life on another planet. Designing the buildings, transportation networks, vehicles, and essential infrastructure requires leaps of imagination and ingenuity. Get ready for HP Mars Home Planet. The challenge will bring together creative thinkers across pro- fessional disciplines and elite educational institutions to simulate what life on Mars could be like. Engineers, architects, designers, artists and students from around the world are invited to participate, either as indi- viduals or in teams, and can design whatever inspires them, from robots to vehicles to skyscrapers to entire city plans. HP and NVIDIA teamed up with Technicolor, Autodesk, Unreal Engine, Fusion, Launch Forth and HTC VIVE to launch HP Mars Home Planet on 31 July at SIGGRAPH, the world’s largest, most influential conference and exhibitions for comput- er graphics and interactive techniques. Image includes: Biosphere 2 at The University of Arizona HP Mars Home Planet challenges engineers, architects, designers, artists, and students to design an urban area for a million peo- ple on the red planet. Issue 8 · Winter 2017 · Innovation Journal 27