Case study 02 Unity · VR · AI

Atomix

A VR chemistry lab where students can get it wrong safely, with an AI tutor that knows exactly why.

Role: Unity engineering, simulation design and AI integration
Timeline: Apr 2026 – Sep 2026
Stack: Unity 6, C#, Unity XR, Convai API, ShaderGraph, NUnit
Recognition: Winner, IET Intech 2k26 (National level)

Atomix's molecular animation of calcium oxide reacting with water, with pause, replay, 3D view and Ask AI controls

chemical reactions simulated: 8
automated tests passing: 226/226
lines of C#: ~40K
assessment tasks: 18

Overview

Atomix is a Unity 6 chemistry laboratory for VR headsets and desktop. Students pick a reaction, pour real quantities with their own hands and see exactly what went wrong when an experiment fails, then ask an in-lab AI assistant that can read the experiment in front of them.

The problem

Lab access is the bottleneck in chemistry education. Reagents cost money, some reactions are genuinely dangerous, and a whole class usually watches one demonstration instead of running the experiment themselves.

The approach

Rebuild the lab bench as a room students can walk into, where quantities matter and mistakes cost nothing. Pair it with an AI assistant that sees the live experiment, so a student practising alone still gets real answers.

AArchitecture

How it fits together

01Input

VR headset Grab, pour and heat with Unity XR controllers
Desktop fallback Keyboard and mouse, injected at runtime

02Simulation

Free-hand reaction engine Validates quantity, order and heating time
Experiment context Reaction, amounts poured, targets, attempts

03Learning

AI lab assistant Convai REST API · voice and text
Offline knowledge base Rule-based answers from live measurements
Molecular animation & graphs Bond changes, ΔH, Ea, ΔS, ΔG

04Progress

Experiment history Up to 300 attempts, saved as JSON
Assessment mode 18 timed tasks, coin economy, exam report

BEngineering decisions

The calls that mattered

01
A reaction engine instead of a scripted sequence
Most lab simulators march you through fixed button presses. Atomix lets students pour freely and checks what actually happened (overdose, underdose, wrong order or heating time), then explains the chemistry behind the failure instead of a generic “try again”.
- 8 inorganic reactions
- Quantity, order and heating-time validation
- Failure explanations tied to the student's own measurements
02
An assistant that knows what is on the bench
The assistant receives the live experiment state: the reaction, what was poured, the target amounts and why an attempt failed. It talks to Convai over plain REST calls with push-to-talk voice or typed questions, and falls back to an offline, rule-based knowledge base when there is no connection.
- Voice and text input
- Grounded in live experiment data
- Offline fallback with no network required
03
Learning and assessment, not just a sandbox
After a successful reaction, students can replay it as a live 3D molecular animation or study its energy-profile and entropy graphs. A separate testing lab turns everything into timed practical and theory tasks with a coin economy and a downloadable exam report.
- 3D molecular animations for all 8 reactions
- ΔH, Ea, ΔS and ΔG graphs
- 18 timed practical and theory tasks with HTML and CSV exam reports
- 226 of 226 automated tests passing