Travancore Analytics is a leading software development company with 15 years' experience in creating custom, digital solutions. The immersive training program they designed for Virtual Forklift leverages Unity's features to significantly improve training outcomes for heavy machinery operators, as demonstrated here:
Results
Read on to learn more about how the innovative training program was created.
Safety and risk mitigation take center stage when it comes to training heavy machinery operators. Virtual Forklift, based in the U.S., specializes in providing training for the proper use of both forklifts and aerial lifts. In their push for excellence, Virtual Forklift recognized the need for a safer and more efficient training approach.
Traditional forklift training, which typically involves using equipment in real-world settings, can pose significant safety risks to both learners and instructors. Inexperienced operators maneuvering forklifts during training sessions are prone to accidents, leading to injuries, property damage, and operational disruptions. In addition, damage to expensive forklift machines causes significant financial impact. These incidents highlight the many risks associated with traditional training methods that rely on real equipment in physical environments.
Virtual Forklift initially adopted a third-party virtual training solution, but quickly realized it did not meet their needs. The solution displayed noticeable aliasing and other graphical quality issues, including jagged edges, pixelation, texture blurring, and inconsistent rendering, resulting in rough and unrealistic visuals that negatively impacted trainees' experience.
There were other performance issues, as well, and concerns about motion sickness caused by frames per second (fps) drops. Overall, the complexity of the application made it challenging to provide a user-friendly training experience.
Recognizing the need for a better solution, Virtual Forklift commissioned a custom-built forklift training application tailored to their specific needs. They collaborated with Travancore Analytics, whose dedicated extended reality (XR) team is proficient in Unity.
Travancore Analytics developed the comprehensive forklift solution for the HTC Vive headset, addressing the shortcomings of the previous application while also introducing enhancements to elevate the training experience.
In the new solution, trainees can dive into various forklift driving scenarios tailored to their skill levels, ensuring active engagement and effective learning. Additionally, the application features a user-friendly portal where administrators, instructors, and trainees can easily manage institutions, user permissions, and trainee data, streamlining the training process.
In the VR forklift simulator, instructors and learners can meet in a shared warehouse space. The solution facilitates real-time collaboration, coupled with the ability for multiple users to join the platform during the same session, creating a dynamic training environment. Additional features like voice chat capabilities and presentation-sharing options further enhance the training experience.
Read more about the Virtual Forklift training program created by Travancore Analytics.
The advanced training solution enables instructors and learners to collaborate in real-time within a virtual warehouse space. To build it, Travancore Analytics leveraged the following Unity features:
Unity's all-in-one development environment streamlined the entire development process, from conceptualization to deployment.
The robust Unity ecosystem made it straightforward to integrate and optimize the various features required for the solution. This included advanced capabilities like HDRP for enhanced visual quality, Shader Graph for custom visual effects, NavMesh AI for optimized navigation experiences, and NVIDIA PhysX for realistic physics simulations.
Access to a wide range of resources, such as pre-made assets, scripts, and plugins, along with expertise from the Unity community, also helped to accelerate development and overcome challenges more quickly.
Unity's cross-platform compatibility was instrumental in seamless deployment across different devices. This provided access options for instructors and learners, allowing them to run the training program on their preferred platform.
Prior to adopting the current solution, Virtual Forklift had been striving to deliver a seamless training experience to their learners. The Travancore Analytics team embraced Unity's extensive features to create a solution that outshone the legacy solution, resulting in:
