Syltec – Biomass systems maintenance operations training simulator

Simulator for industrial maintenance which, by means of virtual reality, allows the training and evaluation of workers’ skills in biomass system maintenance operations.

VIRTUAL REALITY | INDUSTRIAL SIMULATOR | INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

INDUSTRIAL STARTING POINT

Industrial maintenance operations are of great importance for the optimum performance and operation of the machines in an installation, helping to prevent failures and possible breakdowns that could interrupt the activity.

However, technicians do not have enough practice in carrying out these tasks, either because they are operations that are not carried out very often or because they have not been in the job for long and the knowledge is not passed on from the expert workers to the more novice ones, who tend to resort to manuals, which are often more difficult to interpret.

SOLUTION

With this in mind, ITCL’s virtual reality department began to redesign the conventional paper manuals so that the user could feel, as faithfully as possible, what it is like to carry out a maintenance operation in a real environment.

IMPLEMENTATION

This simulator is a joint project between ITCL and SYLTEC within the Inspector project, subsidised by CDTI, in which ITCL has implemented its own system of state machines that allows exercises, steps and decision trees to be configured in an intuitive and flexible way. Individual work has been done on each of the actions and validations that make up the operations to facilitate user training at all times.

In the same way, highly realistic and immersive 3D models and environments have been created specifically prepared for virtual reality, respecting the geometry and the main details of the manufacturer as much as possible, but using a simple polygonal structure that makes them easy to process.

IMPROVEMENTS ACHIEVED

It has been proven that there is a very positive reaction on the part of the user, helping them to maintain their attention throughout the process and thus improving their learning, shortening the time required for training.