Digital/Virtual Trainers are constantly trying to innovate and stay at the top of our game. Digital tools have become essential to our everyday workflows. They help us design better and faster, and provide cost savings as well as big improvements in worker safety.
Virtual reality VR has taken strides in recent years to become a contender in the tech realm. Its usefulness in industries beyond just buzzwords. Among many other benefits, Cost and Safety advantages make it likely VR is here to stay.
VR in engineering just seems to make sense when put in the perspective of what trainers are trying to accomplish through integration of the work tools.
VR may prove useful as a way to provide cheap and convenient training for combat as well as other activities like maintenance tasks. Using off-the-shelf motion sensors, an HTC Vive headset and controllers with a trigger and sensing pad, the program takes a service member step-by-step through an aircraft repair job, from diagnosing the problem to re-testing the part after the fix to make sure it works.
The system is still a prototype, but the plan is to develop an automated guide so troops can train on key tasks with little oversight, wherever they are.
In the loaded virtual reality maintenance scenario, a windshield washer pump needed to be replaced in a reconnaissance aircraft. Using the controllers, users could flip switches to test the pump, then perform the needed maintenance step-by-step in a 360-degree simulation of the aircraft.
“Certainly, you could do it with just about any aircraft, things that require troubleshooting,”
There are some things the system won’t do well. It can’t simulate resistance for more strenuous maintenance tasks, and a user can’t feel around in some area out of view to find a part, the way a maintainer might in a hard-to-reach area. But in an era of high operational tempo, when senior maintainers might be deployed or otherwise unavailable to train more junior troops, engineers envision the system will allow troops to meet training goals and maintain proficiency wherever they are.
The system is designed to be lightweight and easily deployable. Troops can complete a virtual training session, then send a video of the session to a supervisor located anywhere in the world for approval or correction.
Army is gearing to launch the first iterations of its new virtual reality simulators, which will lay the foundation for synthetic training environments at multiple bases.
A squad advanced marksmanship trainer will be delivered to several Army locations next year for close-combat troops. A squad immersive virtual trainer will closely follow.
The building blocks that will become the synthetic training environment, or STE, will eventually include computer-generated avatars incorporated into the battlespace, among other virtual military elements.
While the Army is looking for more personalised training, the new, simulated environments are intended to boost the collective squad, which would face a high-end threat together.
Army is looking at it from a collective -- a squad, a crew, a team, a platoon and then on up. But we have to get the individual piece correct in order to be able to do that.
Referencing the service's unusually swift acquisition effort and collaboration with industry, cross-functional team had been asked to be disruptive, and Army believes they have done just that.
"We have these abilities, and have seen it from our industry partners. Instantaneous feedback. While the Army is not there yet, the service is quickly moving in that direction.
Soldier lethality is one of the priorities of the newly-established Army Futures Command, a new four-star command focused on rapid research and development for future weapons and warfighting capabilities, as well as enhanced training options.
"There are systems that we're looking at that can allow the soldiers to train as they will fight, train where they will fight and train against who they will fight while back in the home-station training environment.
One option for the Army is next-level synthetic training environments, where troops can train individually or in groups in both fixed or mobile live, virtual, or mixed-reality battle spaces of all sizes.
This is a big deal given the inadequacies of some of the existing training platforms. The current training systems are limited in their capabilities. For example, the technology for the existing virtual trainers does not allow the Army to bring in all of the enablers, such as logistics, engineering, and transportation teams.
“We can only bring air, ground platforms, and a few other capabilities. We need to train combined arms to prepare for large-scale combat.
Terrain is also a huge challenge. "We are trying to get to one-world training. Terrain is a stumbling block We are trying to get after that quickly."
User assessment testing for re-configurable virtual trainers has began and within the next two years, the Army wants AI-driven trend and predictive analysis based on biometric and sensor data collected during training exercises.
"Right now, we are only as good as someone's experience and their eye and what they catch or what we see in video. "We want to be able to assess training, and we have some of that capability right now, but not to the degree we need."
A recent example of LVC training is the Air Force’s investment in a common software architecture for its training simulators, creating the Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards program. Also, the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are all looking to connect simulators and live assets to enhance air warfare training.
As LVC technology advances, commercial off-the-shelf technologies play an increasingly critical role. By leveraging the advances in commercially available IT, DoD can gain significant advantages, including reduced development and deployment times as well as the ability to reuse capabilities to gain significant efficiencies. Advanced server technologies and cloud capabilities can maximise reusability and rapid reconfiguration of infrastructure for numerous training needs.
As the military continues to explore the use of LVC training and simulation, and blends real equipment and personnel with virtual assets, commercial off-the-shelf IT capabilities will enable high fidelity, speed and immersive training experiences to grow skills and develop proficiency for our military forces.
By combining LVC with the right network strategy, DoD can securely achieve significant benefits in costs and efficiencies, as well as lower stress on existing systems, reduce wear and tear on operational systems, and decrease the chance of mishaps, which can occur using traditional live training. Building LVC capabilities on a sound network architecture minimises risk and ensures the mission is accomplished.
Somebody has to spearhead the request for implementation. If there is a greenlight and a budget to implement a VR system for product design, they should always be willing to show engineers and designers in their organization exactly how learning to use VR will help them expedite various workflows. People in organizations and institutions become set in their ways and are weary of adopting a new technology that purports to convenience them but instead does the opposite.
If you are the one who is pushing for a VR system, be prepared to sell everyone on its benefits. You have to demonstrate why VR is right for your product design team. VR can easily seem unnecessary if a skeptical employee isn’t interested in trying it. Suggest pain points that VR can help them with informally, then do something like show them their own 3D design in VR to help them understand practical reasons for integrating VR into their product design workflow.The challenge of finding existing ROIs shouldn’t deter you from creating your own.
Once the VR system is maintained at your organization, track how often people are using it, what they are using for, and why they are using it. These records can help you create estimates for potential gains.
Calculate cost avoidance and be prepared for grey areas that require approximations. If a product design team finds a problem with a design in VR, it can be hard to determine whether or not the issue would have been found without the VR system. Compare VR usage with typical prototype cost data, and offset the cost of implementing, operating, maintaining and troubleshooting a VR system against the cost of physical prototyping.
Not only might VR help your product design team improve processes along the product’s lifecycle, but the team itself will benefit from learning the ins and outs of installing, operating, maintaining and repairing a VR system design.
VR is just a single, tool not a catchall solution for every bottleneck in product design. VR systems for product design are being adopting more frequently, so new hardware and software skills may eventually be required for navigating and getting the most out of immersive computing technology at your organization
The virtual reality simulations will enable a low price training by reducing the cost of training material, trainees safety costs, trainers salaries, and more. This huge opportunity is taken as a challenge to make training smarter and easier to access for every trainee.
Early models of VR systems tend to be costly. However, as the technology advances, it may become more affordable. In the case of firefighting, VR training like other online training products can reduce fuel costs and other expenses. It’s possible that in the future VR training will be available to firefighters in locations all around the world.
When you need high-risk or high-performance training, you’re usually talking big budgets. Training a construction worker , or soldier with comprehensive and realistic training is expensive — and the real-world costs of improper training in any of those professions is ever higher.
The virtual reality simulations will enable a low price training by reducing the cost of training material, trainees safety costs, trainers salaries, and more. This huge opportunity is taken as a challenge to make training smarter and easier to access for every trainee.
With virtual reality, you can deliver customized, realistic training experiences for a fraction of the cost. Then you can provide that virtual experience or even have trainees train together anywhere in the world without anyone needing to travel.
All the training in the world is worthless unless it sticks. While VR Training is still relatively new, there is a lot of research around what helps trainees to retain their training. Many of these factors are inherent characteristics of virtual reality training.
VR tech is fairly accessible to the modern trainer if they want to get their hands dirty but it may soon be more mainstream in the future of making things and workplace training.
Hands-on experience has proven to be the best way to retain new skills. Virtual reality, in contrast to classroom training, gives you the opportunity to provide this realistic on-the-job training experience.
1. Create a More Engaging Training Experience
Virtual reality training forces trainees to get out of their seats and practice the learning objective. As the name implies, you’re getting as close to real-life training as possible. VR gives you the ability to go beyond telling trainees what they will experience in the field and showing them instead; placing them in those actual scenarios and experiences without the risk.
2. Push Limitations of Traditional Training
There are a lot of real-world scenarios that you can’t encounter, simulate, or sometimes even explain in the real world without unacceptable levels of risk or cost. Virtual reality busts through these limitations. You can literally design and produce the impossible and then transport your trainees right into the middle of it.
3. More Practical Hands-on Approach
Traditional training, at best, shows pictures and videos of the “right way” to do things. Layered on top of that you might drill some lists and devices to help trainees remember the steps when they have to perform the task or procedure in the field. Good luck getting it right the first few times in the field.
Virtual reality training gives you the ability to give your trainees practical hands-on exercises the first time and as many times as it takes for each to get it perfect before they ever do it in the real world.
4. Make Serious Mistakes — and Walk Away From Them
Safety and costs often prevent us from allowing trainees make and learn from their worst mistakes, yet experiencing the consequences of those mistakes — getting complacent, being sloppy, or just momentarily slipping up — provides us with some of our best training opportunities.
Virtual reality gives you the ability to let trainees make all their mistakes, even the potentially disasterous ones, in the safety of a simulated world then try again.
5. Speed to Train
VR training isn’t limited by facilities, location, or even instructor availability, in many cases. This advantage enables you to get every employee trained and ready to perform in the field as fast as they achieve competency in the virtual world — in fact, possibly faster.
6. Delivering Results to a Wide Range of Industries
Continued learning and increased efficiency are staples for any company or institution worth its salt. Absorbing material quickly, optimizing application, and streamlining interaction/workflow directly influences the bottom line.
7. Appealing to a Variety of Training Styles
Classic teaching and training methods convey content to students according to the instructor’s preferred style of learning. These styles are classified as visual, auditory, tactical, and kinesthetic. But what if multiple styles of learning could be satisfied simultaneously? With VR learning, this is a new reality.
Although recent studies have raised questions about the utility of addressing certain learning styles, the fact remains that people have strong preferences for acquiring new skills and information. VR experiences access all the senses, a variety of preferences can be satisfied and delighted. It offers the ability to simultaneously reach students across at least three of the four classical learning styles. Among military specialists in particular, there is universal agreement on VR technology’s effectiveness and potential to breathe new life into traditional training methods.
8. Making Learning Interesting
Virtual reality simulations use basic principles of learning to produce compelling and memorable end results. We engage the user with breathtaking graphics, informative audio and interactive scenarios using our 3D virtual environments to give a sense of really being there.
9. Replicate Real-Life Situations
VR is used to create interactive scenarios which reflect real-life situations. Virtual reality e-learning can be used to simulate the way equipment responds; emulate the way machinery works or to replicate soft skills such as human actions and behaviour.
10. Perform training remotely
Instructor-led training often requires employees to meet at a specific training location. In addition to saving time on travel, trends in the workplace are leading to a decentralized workplace - people are now able to collaborate over a vast distance via video calls and in VR. VR headsets are becoming even cheaper, they can now be purchased for training and then implemented remotely. A trainee will be able to download and access the training material from anywhere.
Some workers can be limited in their access to it because of many reasons like distance. Virtual reality is a great solution to distance education which for some is a necessity. Instead of sitting in front of a computer reading or video chatting, students can get a full impression of being in a work environment.
Virtual reality VR has taken strides in recent years to become a contender in the tech realm. Its usefulness in industries beyond just buzzwords. Among many other benefits, Cost and Safety advantages make it likely VR is here to stay.
VR in engineering just seems to make sense when put in the perspective of what trainers are trying to accomplish through integration of the work tools.
VR may prove useful as a way to provide cheap and convenient training for combat as well as other activities like maintenance tasks. Using off-the-shelf motion sensors, an HTC Vive headset and controllers with a trigger and sensing pad, the program takes a service member step-by-step through an aircraft repair job, from diagnosing the problem to re-testing the part after the fix to make sure it works.
The system is still a prototype, but the plan is to develop an automated guide so troops can train on key tasks with little oversight, wherever they are.
In the loaded virtual reality maintenance scenario, a windshield washer pump needed to be replaced in a reconnaissance aircraft. Using the controllers, users could flip switches to test the pump, then perform the needed maintenance step-by-step in a 360-degree simulation of the aircraft.
“Certainly, you could do it with just about any aircraft, things that require troubleshooting,”
There are some things the system won’t do well. It can’t simulate resistance for more strenuous maintenance tasks, and a user can’t feel around in some area out of view to find a part, the way a maintainer might in a hard-to-reach area. But in an era of high operational tempo, when senior maintainers might be deployed or otherwise unavailable to train more junior troops, engineers envision the system will allow troops to meet training goals and maintain proficiency wherever they are.
The system is designed to be lightweight and easily deployable. Troops can complete a virtual training session, then send a video of the session to a supervisor located anywhere in the world for approval or correction.
Army is gearing to launch the first iterations of its new virtual reality simulators, which will lay the foundation for synthetic training environments at multiple bases.
A squad advanced marksmanship trainer will be delivered to several Army locations next year for close-combat troops. A squad immersive virtual trainer will closely follow.
The building blocks that will become the synthetic training environment, or STE, will eventually include computer-generated avatars incorporated into the battlespace, among other virtual military elements.
While the Army is looking for more personalised training, the new, simulated environments are intended to boost the collective squad, which would face a high-end threat together.
Army is looking at it from a collective -- a squad, a crew, a team, a platoon and then on up. But we have to get the individual piece correct in order to be able to do that.
Referencing the service's unusually swift acquisition effort and collaboration with industry, cross-functional team had been asked to be disruptive, and Army believes they have done just that.
"We have these abilities, and have seen it from our industry partners. Instantaneous feedback. While the Army is not there yet, the service is quickly moving in that direction.
Soldier lethality is one of the priorities of the newly-established Army Futures Command, a new four-star command focused on rapid research and development for future weapons and warfighting capabilities, as well as enhanced training options.
"There are systems that we're looking at that can allow the soldiers to train as they will fight, train where they will fight and train against who they will fight while back in the home-station training environment.
One option for the Army is next-level synthetic training environments, where troops can train individually or in groups in both fixed or mobile live, virtual, or mixed-reality battle spaces of all sizes.
This is a big deal given the inadequacies of some of the existing training platforms. The current training systems are limited in their capabilities. For example, the technology for the existing virtual trainers does not allow the Army to bring in all of the enablers, such as logistics, engineering, and transportation teams.
“We can only bring air, ground platforms, and a few other capabilities. We need to train combined arms to prepare for large-scale combat.
Terrain is also a huge challenge. "We are trying to get to one-world training. Terrain is a stumbling block We are trying to get after that quickly."
User assessment testing for re-configurable virtual trainers has began and within the next two years, the Army wants AI-driven trend and predictive analysis based on biometric and sensor data collected during training exercises.
"Right now, we are only as good as someone's experience and their eye and what they catch or what we see in video. "We want to be able to assess training, and we have some of that capability right now, but not to the degree we need."
A recent example of LVC training is the Air Force’s investment in a common software architecture for its training simulators, creating the Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards program. Also, the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are all looking to connect simulators and live assets to enhance air warfare training.
As LVC technology advances, commercial off-the-shelf technologies play an increasingly critical role. By leveraging the advances in commercially available IT, DoD can gain significant advantages, including reduced development and deployment times as well as the ability to reuse capabilities to gain significant efficiencies. Advanced server technologies and cloud capabilities can maximise reusability and rapid reconfiguration of infrastructure for numerous training needs.
As the military continues to explore the use of LVC training and simulation, and blends real equipment and personnel with virtual assets, commercial off-the-shelf IT capabilities will enable high fidelity, speed and immersive training experiences to grow skills and develop proficiency for our military forces.
By combining LVC with the right network strategy, DoD can securely achieve significant benefits in costs and efficiencies, as well as lower stress on existing systems, reduce wear and tear on operational systems, and decrease the chance of mishaps, which can occur using traditional live training. Building LVC capabilities on a sound network architecture minimises risk and ensures the mission is accomplished.
Somebody has to spearhead the request for implementation. If there is a greenlight and a budget to implement a VR system for product design, they should always be willing to show engineers and designers in their organization exactly how learning to use VR will help them expedite various workflows. People in organizations and institutions become set in their ways and are weary of adopting a new technology that purports to convenience them but instead does the opposite.
If you are the one who is pushing for a VR system, be prepared to sell everyone on its benefits. You have to demonstrate why VR is right for your product design team. VR can easily seem unnecessary if a skeptical employee isn’t interested in trying it. Suggest pain points that VR can help them with informally, then do something like show them their own 3D design in VR to help them understand practical reasons for integrating VR into their product design workflow.The challenge of finding existing ROIs shouldn’t deter you from creating your own.
Once the VR system is maintained at your organization, track how often people are using it, what they are using for, and why they are using it. These records can help you create estimates for potential gains.
Calculate cost avoidance and be prepared for grey areas that require approximations. If a product design team finds a problem with a design in VR, it can be hard to determine whether or not the issue would have been found without the VR system. Compare VR usage with typical prototype cost data, and offset the cost of implementing, operating, maintaining and troubleshooting a VR system against the cost of physical prototyping.
Not only might VR help your product design team improve processes along the product’s lifecycle, but the team itself will benefit from learning the ins and outs of installing, operating, maintaining and repairing a VR system design.
VR is just a single, tool not a catchall solution for every bottleneck in product design. VR systems for product design are being adopting more frequently, so new hardware and software skills may eventually be required for navigating and getting the most out of immersive computing technology at your organization
The virtual reality simulations will enable a low price training by reducing the cost of training material, trainees safety costs, trainers salaries, and more. This huge opportunity is taken as a challenge to make training smarter and easier to access for every trainee.
Early models of VR systems tend to be costly. However, as the technology advances, it may become more affordable. In the case of firefighting, VR training like other online training products can reduce fuel costs and other expenses. It’s possible that in the future VR training will be available to firefighters in locations all around the world.
When you need high-risk or high-performance training, you’re usually talking big budgets. Training a construction worker , or soldier with comprehensive and realistic training is expensive — and the real-world costs of improper training in any of those professions is ever higher.
The virtual reality simulations will enable a low price training by reducing the cost of training material, trainees safety costs, trainers salaries, and more. This huge opportunity is taken as a challenge to make training smarter and easier to access for every trainee.
With virtual reality, you can deliver customized, realistic training experiences for a fraction of the cost. Then you can provide that virtual experience or even have trainees train together anywhere in the world without anyone needing to travel.
All the training in the world is worthless unless it sticks. While VR Training is still relatively new, there is a lot of research around what helps trainees to retain their training. Many of these factors are inherent characteristics of virtual reality training.
VR tech is fairly accessible to the modern trainer if they want to get their hands dirty but it may soon be more mainstream in the future of making things and workplace training.
Hands-on experience has proven to be the best way to retain new skills. Virtual reality, in contrast to classroom training, gives you the opportunity to provide this realistic on-the-job training experience.
1. Create a More Engaging Training Experience
Virtual reality training forces trainees to get out of their seats and practice the learning objective. As the name implies, you’re getting as close to real-life training as possible. VR gives you the ability to go beyond telling trainees what they will experience in the field and showing them instead; placing them in those actual scenarios and experiences without the risk.
2. Push Limitations of Traditional Training
There are a lot of real-world scenarios that you can’t encounter, simulate, or sometimes even explain in the real world without unacceptable levels of risk or cost. Virtual reality busts through these limitations. You can literally design and produce the impossible and then transport your trainees right into the middle of it.
3. More Practical Hands-on Approach
Traditional training, at best, shows pictures and videos of the “right way” to do things. Layered on top of that you might drill some lists and devices to help trainees remember the steps when they have to perform the task or procedure in the field. Good luck getting it right the first few times in the field.
Virtual reality training gives you the ability to give your trainees practical hands-on exercises the first time and as many times as it takes for each to get it perfect before they ever do it in the real world.
4. Make Serious Mistakes — and Walk Away From Them
Safety and costs often prevent us from allowing trainees make and learn from their worst mistakes, yet experiencing the consequences of those mistakes — getting complacent, being sloppy, or just momentarily slipping up — provides us with some of our best training opportunities.
Virtual reality gives you the ability to let trainees make all their mistakes, even the potentially disasterous ones, in the safety of a simulated world then try again.
5. Speed to Train
VR training isn’t limited by facilities, location, or even instructor availability, in many cases. This advantage enables you to get every employee trained and ready to perform in the field as fast as they achieve competency in the virtual world — in fact, possibly faster.
6. Delivering Results to a Wide Range of Industries
Continued learning and increased efficiency are staples for any company or institution worth its salt. Absorbing material quickly, optimizing application, and streamlining interaction/workflow directly influences the bottom line.
7. Appealing to a Variety of Training Styles
Classic teaching and training methods convey content to students according to the instructor’s preferred style of learning. These styles are classified as visual, auditory, tactical, and kinesthetic. But what if multiple styles of learning could be satisfied simultaneously? With VR learning, this is a new reality.
Although recent studies have raised questions about the utility of addressing certain learning styles, the fact remains that people have strong preferences for acquiring new skills and information. VR experiences access all the senses, a variety of preferences can be satisfied and delighted. It offers the ability to simultaneously reach students across at least three of the four classical learning styles. Among military specialists in particular, there is universal agreement on VR technology’s effectiveness and potential to breathe new life into traditional training methods.
8. Making Learning Interesting
Virtual reality simulations use basic principles of learning to produce compelling and memorable end results. We engage the user with breathtaking graphics, informative audio and interactive scenarios using our 3D virtual environments to give a sense of really being there.
9. Replicate Real-Life Situations
VR is used to create interactive scenarios which reflect real-life situations. Virtual reality e-learning can be used to simulate the way equipment responds; emulate the way machinery works or to replicate soft skills such as human actions and behaviour.
10. Perform training remotely
Instructor-led training often requires employees to meet at a specific training location. In addition to saving time on travel, trends in the workplace are leading to a decentralized workplace - people are now able to collaborate over a vast distance via video calls and in VR. VR headsets are becoming even cheaper, they can now be purchased for training and then implemented remotely. A trainee will be able to download and access the training material from anywhere.
Some workers can be limited in their access to it because of many reasons like distance. Virtual reality is a great solution to distance education which for some is a necessity. Instead of sitting in front of a computer reading or video chatting, students can get a full impression of being in a work environment.
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