There are some fields where mistakes have real and serious consequences. Industries like manufacturing and healthcare tend to be vulnerable to small mistakes that escalate to massive issues. You would assume that if the consequences might be dire, companies would invest heavily in training. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.
A Gallup report highlighted data that indicates how 62% of the global workforce had never had any form of safety training. It’s no wonder that one in five or 18% of workers said they had experienced serious harm in their last two years of work.
That said, tech like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) could possibly lead to drastic improvements in industries that involve hands-on work. Let’s learn more.
AR and VR Have a Lot of Untapped Potential
While both technologies have been around for a few years now, it feels like they haven’t really picked up much steam. That said, it’s an industry which has truly massive untapped potential.
According to
Mordor Intelligence, the VR and AR market currently has a market value of over $20 billion. Over the next five years, this is set to grow to four times that size.
In the future, surgeons will be able to use it to prepare for operations, and engineers could use it to visualize complex maneuvers in high-risk projects. AR and VR feel quite parallel to the early stages of cloud computing. At its inception, the cloud felt like it might only be relevant in a handful of situations; however, today, it’s widely used commercially and non-commercially.
This explains why public perception feels somewhat lackluster. The high cost of headsets and limited use-cases for the average person make AR and VR headsets seem like a novelty, but they’re not. Moreover, the cost is not a limiting factor for massive industries that can afford them and are willing to pay for custom AR/VR applications. Let’s now look at some potential use cases of this tech when it comes to the hands-on sectors.
How Can Hands-On Industries Benefit?
First off, let’s start by talking about what we mean by ‘hands-on’ industries. In some industries, training can be distilled into 10 PowerPoint slides and self-taught in the span of an hour. Then there are industries, where even with months of in-the-field work, you’re still learning things.
These roles exist in almost every field. Take social work. It takes a long time to be an effective social worker, and training always continues. This is especially true when they work in high-skill requirement settings like inner-city school kids. Many of these social workers pursue
master’s of school counseling online programs to skill up without missing a day of work.
As St. Bonaventure University explains, these types of programs eliminate the need for people to commute to and from a regular campus. However, what if video conferencing were just the first step? Skills like therapy and counseling need some level of connection which involves more than just the portrait of your face on a screen.
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In some universities, students wore VR headsets that allowed them to ‘walk’ into a simulated counselor's office and demonstrate how they’d handle the situation. Likewise, hands-on training could help several other industries, like:
- Manufacturing
- Assembly
- Heavy machinery operation
- Aviation
- High-risk fields such as oil rigs and shipping
Effectiveness in Manufacturing
Let’s look at some more in-depth examples of how and where this technology is helping businesses in the present. Tom Kohn, CEO of Premiere Equipment, Inc., notes how immersive VR simulations have
helped train workers in assembly. Likewise, according to Justin Sirotin, founder of a product development and design company, extended reality (XR) is lowering training time while also improving efficiency.
You can imagine how helpful the overlay feature on AR glasses is, especially in warehouse settings. Warehouse staff would quickly be able to learn how to pack, unpack, and store items with AR assistive features.
Here are some other aspects that will benefit in manufacturing:
- Simulation of dangerous scenarios (chemical spills or machine breakdowns)
- Refresher training
- Precision assembly practice
- Shutdown safety drills
The best part is that once a training program is made, it can be shared with new employees easily. With traditional training methods, someone would have to take time to help new workers out. In some fields, these AR glasses could safely be worn during regular work so that employees have something to rely on as a guide.
Key Challenges to Implementation
While the advantages are undeniably worthwhile, it’s also important to recognize the challenges that come with using this tech. Firstly, the expensive nature of suitable goggles and the hardware they rely on makes large-scale deployment an issue. If you’re a small business or if funding is low, the total cost to implement can raise some eyebrows.
Secondly, it’s likely that after spending the money to acquire this tech, companies would drop other training models to save costs. This could potentially lead to an over-reliance on this new technology in the future.
Moreover, while AR and VR are fantastic, you simply can’t ignore the lived-in experience that senior staff can pass on. What’s more, some people react badly to this tech. In fact, there are studies that show that even aspects like text patterns in AR headsets are causing ‘cybersickness’. Until these kinks are straightened out, adoption, even in industrial settings, might be slow.
Balancing It Out
At the end of the day, we're looking at revolutionary technology here. Even if it takes some time to get popular, it isn’t going away. OK, so it’s not going to magically replace all training overnight, but it’s a massive addition to the toolset that companies can use.
In some industries where human error can cause millions of dollars in losses, the simulation training that this tech offers is … well … beautiful! And when the cost of implementation comes down, we’ll likely see countless industries adopting it as it goes from nice-to-have equipment to a nailed-on ‘essential’ part of most people’s training experience.
