Safer and more effective offshore work with Virtual and Mixed Reality
Virtual and Mixed Reality have huge potential in offshore industries where acute repairs are costly and time-consuming, communicating with employees working elsewhere is complicated, and the risk of accidents and injuries must be kept at a bare minimum. All these are challenges that can be solved with Virtual and Mixed Reality.
Enhance training while saving time and money
Virtual Reality (VR) is a valuable tool that – if used right – has the potential to significantly improve offshore safety training.
Over recent years, VR has gained wide adoption in offshore industries. It offers a way to simulate the offshore surroundings where they can perform safety training.
“Just like aspiring pilots use simulations for practicing before they fly a real airplane, simulations are great for offshore safety training. With VR glasses, we can put employees on an offshore rig or wind turbine and let them become familiarized with the details of the environment before they set foot on it for the first time. Especially when onboarding new employees, you can enhance safety this way” says Jens Lauritsen, Chief Product Officer, Virsabi.
Companies operating offshore spend a lot of time and money on safety training. For the employees, that means a lot of time spent on exercises in classrooms or on a computer, because training in the real environment can be both expensive and dangerous. And that is where offshore companies can really benefit from VR experiences that simulate the real environment and let the worker train over and over again, as many times as they want.
Remote assistance to offshore locations
With Mixed Reality (MR), we see equally great opportunities for improving safety and enhancing efficiency. For instance by allowing remote assistance to offshore locations.
“When for instance equipment is due for maintenance or breaks without warning, companies must send specialists to remote offshore locations to fix it. That is costly in time, money, and CO2. But with MR, offshore workers on site can fix their problems right there and then with aid from a layer of digital guidance in MR glasses or remote assistance from a specialist who can see what they see and guide them through voice and drawings in their field of vision,” says Jens Lauritsen.
Mixed Reality is the merge of real and virtual worlds. The viewer wears a pair of head-mounted see-through glasses that display data on top of what he or she sees through the glasses. MR gives the viewer access to manuals and instructions in the glasses, freeing both of their hands to perform the necessary task.
MR enables offshore companies to use their resources in the best way possible. And it lets workers fix many more problems on site with better safety, lower costs, and no unnecessary travel time
