iCASTS - Mining VR
Project Overview
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.
Video documentation
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.
iDome
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
Mining VR Training Modules
Interaction Device
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