Ground breaking enhancement for interactive training and immersion
in mine visualisation in a safe environment
The iCinema Centre along with Tiller Design has been conferred the world leading
design award, the Gold IDEA for its iCASTS, the Centre's health and safety VR
training systems in the Interactive Product Experiences Category. Presented by
IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America), IDEA (International Design Excellence
Awards) is the premier international competition honoring design excellence in
products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts.
Winning the award signals international recognition of iCinema’s interaction
design research.
The development of iCASTS, the iCinema Advanced Safety and Training Simulators,
is the result of a unique inter-disciplinary collaboration at the University
of New South Wales (UNSW) between the College of Fine Arts and the Faculty of
Engineering through its School of Computer Science and the School of Mining.
The highly realistic Virtual Reality underground and surface mining environments
have generated multi-million dollar sales and attracted intense interest across
the primary and secondary industries.
Initial commercial contracts are focused on mine safety with New South Innovations
(NSi), the technology commercialisation division of UNSW, signing a multi-million
dollar agreement to supply Virtual Reality (VR) technologies to Mines Rescue
Pty Ltd (MRPL) for safety training. This outcome is the result of a seven year
development process within the School of Mining Engineering at UNSW in collaboration
with Coal Services Pty Ltd (CSPL).
Similar to a giant sophisticated computer game, each interactive software module
recreates mine environments for various training scenarios, and are displayed
in multiple theatre modes including a 360-degree AVIE version for group training
and a 180-degree iDome for individual training sessions.
The world first AVIE (Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment) and
benchmark iDome theatres were developed by the iCinema Centre for Interactive
Research. The sales agreement saw UNSW supply four 360-degree AVIE theatres and
12 iDomes delivered to CSPL at four purpose built VR training sites across NSW.
The technology is deployed initially at Argenton (Newcastle), Woonoona (Wollongong),
Lithgow and Singleton.
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AVIE Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment |
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Key characteristic differentiators for the latest iCinema technology include:
- A 360 degree stereo projection theatre delivers a high-resolution totally immersive 3D experience
- Capability to be interactively used by groups rather than just one person at a time (a limitation of overseas VR developments)
- Unprecedented level of realism and immersion
- Trainees can actually recognise their own mine environments
- Continual build-up of database of actual mines
- Ability to be tailored to individual mine or equipment manufacturer needs
- Image, not text-based training delivers potential to be easily used in overseas operations such as in China or Latin America
The interaction device was developed with the assistance of Tiller
Design,
a professional product development team. It consists of a central control
console and a 3D inertia hand held wand that allows the user to navigate
and travel through virtual environments as well as control physical environmental
attributes such as lighting, sound and playback of a simulation. Both console
and wand are intuitive, immediately accessible but importantly do not distract
from the virtual environment experience. The wand allows the user to interact
directly with the environment by selecting items, moving objects, and simulating
basic tasks that would be done in the real world environment. The console
gently removes itself from the environment by lowering the lighting and brightness
of controls depending on the status of the training program. Together, the
console-wand combination provides an ergonomic interactive experience.
Initial introduction to the immersion environment through the virtual reality
training scenarios is an uncanny realistic experience. In an underground
mine vehicle moving along a drive, for instance, you can see in all directions
as in real vision simply depending on where you look. You feel you can reach
out and touch the roof bolts. You can manoeuvre past static vehicles. Or
walk up to operating continuous miners. And in the process you can interactively
learn where you should or should not go - and to recognise danger signs and
situations.
Similarly in an open cut simulated environment at the wheel of a giant haul truck
you can learn to manoeuvre beside an electric shovel for loading and be alert
to how easy it is not to see people or personnel vehicles from a driving position
several metres high.
These virtual experiences enable users to begin to visualise and recognise
complex mining situations, build up a knowledge of procedures and skills and
undergo training in a safe and forgiving environment.
Dr Phil Stothard, Chairman of the International Mining VR Group and Senior Research Fellow at the UNSW School of Mining Engineering, is responsible for creating the interactive group based virtual reality training scenarios for Coal Services that will run on the systems. "UNSW and CSPL are leading the world in this field," he said. "There is no question that these technologies have the potential to save lives and their full potential will be fully realised through further domestic and international collaboration.
Use of these systems provides mines with key cost savings in addition to their ability to provide enhanced safety training:
- It allows training to take place at any time of day
- It reduces down time on taking equipment out of production for training purposes
- This reduces training impact on production levels
- Being highly familiar equipment and its operation through the training simulation means that operators are far less likely to damage multi-million dollar equipment once they start in the actual operating environment - a huge saving on maintenance and repair
- Improved knowledge and skills reduce injuries and increase productivity
- Improved competency increases staff morale
- Improved risk assessment tools
- Workforce has high level of competence before entering real environment
- Maintains a record of personal assessment and achievements
- Identifies deficiencies in personnel training without risk
- Trains away unsafe practices
- Enables faster start-up with better prepared staff
The progressive improvement of the technology and delivery of novel interactive content continues through interfaculty collaborative research.
http://www.mining.unsw.edu.au/Research/projects.htm
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Mining VR Training Modules |
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