| |NOVEMBER 202119HOW USEFUL IS VR TECHNOLOGY IN PREVENTING ACCIDENTS AND DISRUPTIONS AND TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK IT CAN REDUCE DOWNTIME AND THE COST INCURRED?I think it is one of the best use cases for VR in manufacturing and some allied industries as well like construction. VR can play a very important role in reducing accidents, and one of the best ways in which you can do that is to provide high quality safety training for workers and technicians who are working in the field. That part of training has always seen a big gap in India and many developing nations.So, we are also looking at things like training a crane operator in a construction industry or training for fire hazards inside a plant. Employees can be trained in a safe VR environment away from the shop and by the time they actually start working in the factory, they are much more prepared and if something happens, they can react better, ensuring the safety of manufacturing floor.HOW DO YOU THINK GAMIFICATION IS BEING COMBINED WITH VR, AND HELPING USERS PERFORM BETTER IN A SIMULATED ENVIRONMENT?That is definitely one of the elements of VR that makes it very attractive, especially for the younger generation, who are getting into workforce, and who have grown up playing games. Gamification makes learning more fun through what they call as active learning. When you gamify the activities, you are actually a part of the learning process and you can do things on your own. And then there are some rewards which make it more interesting.There are many benefits of having this kind of VR training. Sometimes industry does not have the resources to give people training in a real environment or they do not want to put trainees at risk. But in a virtual gamified environment, you can make a mistake and learn from it because you do not have the risk of breaking anything. So, there are many facets of training using VR which are superior to many of the traditional kinds of hands-on skills training.COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT YOUR COMPANY WINNING THE NASSCOM MANUFACTURING INNOVATION CHALLENGE IN THE VR CATEGORY?The technology and the company were licensed from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where I am a faculty in the industry engineering department. This was a technology that was developed in my center. One of the things that we were trying to focus on was to increase the speed at which one can build virtual reality environments. Traditionally, one of the bottlenecks for VR has been the time it takes to build VR environments, which is usually very slow and the content has always been a problem. So, we have been building a platform that can be used to design the environment in a short time. The way we develop the software is by merging 360 degree videos, video captured for the entire room or entire factory, and then merging them with virtual reality in a way to increase the speed of development of products. So, we licensed the technology and commercialized it.India is a fantastic market for virtual reality, as there is a lot of interesting technology adoption going on in India. When we saw the NASSCOM challenge competition for manufacturing innovation, we decided to compete for it. The challenge that was provided was to create a virtual plant. It was provided by Bayer Crop Sciences Company in India that was a partner with a NASSCOM Center of Excellence in AR/VR. We were one of the 90 companies who participated and finally, we were selected as the winner in AR/VR category.HOW DO YOU SEE THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN TERMS OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION? WHICH TECHNOLOGIES DO YOU THINK HAVE MASSIVE POTENTIAL FOR THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY, BUT ARE YET TO BE IMPLEMENTED?Trends like virtual plant are going to become the norm. If you can reduce the number of people traveling to your factory, you are cutting down the cost. So, this technology is something that we are going to see grow. We are also going to see companies trying to reduce dependence on lower skilled employees. We are going to see adoption of technologies that can be used to monitor, collect data, and use that on the cloud so that people can work remotely. There is going to be a huge investment in that.Another useful technology for the future is Cobots or Cooperative Robots. These are robots that can work with human beings hand-in-hand. Also, I think that we are going to see a lot more of next generation 3D Printing being adopted in the Indian industry. In last three to four months, companies have been making ventilators using 3D printed parts in India. People have woken up to the fact that there is a real value for these technologies in any situation. So, I believe that there is going to be a ten-fold increase in usage of 3D Printing.As the pandemic fades-out in 2021, there is going to be a big change in Indian industry and it is going to modernize itself in a very big way, with huge investment in VR/AR, machine learning and other technologies. INDIA IS A FANTASTIC MARKET FOR VIRTUAL REALITY, AS THERE IS A LOT OF INTERESTING TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION GOING ON IN INDIA
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