By Darren Cohen, associate partner and portfolio lead for reality science at Business Science Corporation
A significant challenge facing mining and other industries is skills development and the question of how to move the needle when it comes to ensuring memory retention in safety training. Virtual Reality (VR) technology offers a solution that is both more efficient and more effective at skills transfer, which can sometimes be a matter of life and death.
VR is an established and proven technology. However, historically, VR has largely existed in the realm of the gaming industry, where the technology has been developed and refined. Beyond its impressive “wow factor”, VR is no longer just a fad. Recent technological advancements have opened VR to applications as a mainstream business tool that can save organisations time and money and assist in skills transfer.
This is of special importance in the mining industry, which has taken great strides to improve its safety record, but still faces safe-production challenges, as evidenced by the recent spate of incidents and fatalities at several South African mines during this year.
VR technology provides a fully immersive 3D experience, giving participants a sense of really being in the environment they are viewing. Sensors in the Head Mounted Display (HMD) track motion as the participant’s head moves and alter vision accordingly. Participants gain hands-on experience in a safe, controlled virtual environment that closely replicates the real world in which they will be working, in ways that have never been possible with traditional 2D training media. This allows participants to become completely familiar with even the most dangerous working environments, in complete safety.
Click here to read about how VR enables emotional, visceral, and cognitive experiences.
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