Eastern Iowa Community Colleges invites the public to the grand opening of its EON Reality Interactive Digital Center on Tuesday.

The center will be available to local manufacturers and businesses developing virtual and augmented reality training for their employees. The college began training VR/AR students in January through a special partnership with EON Reality. The center expands that partnership even further. The grand opening festivities include two different times. Guests can attend either, or both. The first, which is focused on health care, begins at 1 p.m. The second focuses on advanced manufacturing and business at 3:30 p.m.

Because of the crowds expected, the grand opening will be held at two locations. Individuals will begin at the Figge Art Museum, 225 W. 2nd St., then move to the virtual reality lab at the college’s Advanced Technology Environmental Energy Center directly across the street. At the Figge, visitors can see presentations, hear from speakers already using the technology in the field and take a look at the EON Icube Mobile.

The Icube Mobile is a portable, multi-sided immersive environment in which participants become surrounded by virtual images and sound. Designed for convenience, the device measures about 10 feet on each side and is, essentially, a box into which the user walks and becomes immersed in a virtual-reality world. The Icube will be at the Figge, where visitors can experience it and check out the college’s other VR/AR equipment at its lab. Among the speakers will be Joe Cheben, senior engineering associate at ExxonMobil and physician Dr. Anuradha Khanna, associate professor of ophthalmology at Loyola University. Cheben will talk about the uses of VR/AR in advanced manufacturing while Khanna will discuss its use in health care.

For more information, visit www.eicc.edu/eonopening