Written by inTechBrew, a nuclear innovation ecosystem that delivers insights and industry innovations. They choosed to explore the Uptale technology and VR industrial applications through our customer cases.
IS THIS YOUR CHALLENGE?
Anyone going to work on a nuclear site or in a specific nuclear facility has to undergo a training. It can be either a brief security session to understand the rules on site and the basic security/safety considerations to method statements practice, to know the key aspects when operating a process within a facility.
It takes time and ressources. From security staff all the way to the person organising work on plant, they have to be mobilised, make time to be available to provide induction course in lieu of focussing on other tasks with more added values.
In addition, when it comes to training for specific technical activities, some parts of the site and/or
equipment become unavailable as they are used for a specific training programme.
Today, we see a lot of VR/AR solutions dedicated to scenario planning, digital twin, communication. However, the vast majority are quite complex to exploit by industrials. Quite often, they require specialists to process the data but also expensive equipment to perform the facility planing. In other words, most of these solutions are unforatunaltely not easy to integrate to improve day-to-day process.
With a solution easy to use, not requiring any VR/AR expertise, any security safety officer could set up a whole library of security training. It would save him/her a tremendous amount of time and focus on what generates high added value.
INTECHBREW'S INSIGHT
Uptale, a French company incorporated in 2017 and focussing on Educational Technology (Edtech) has become a key player when it comes to immersive learning for the B2B sector. Uptale offers the most powerful Virtual Reality software, hardware & expertise to upskill frontline workers where they should be: on the field, facing real-life situations.
The immersive learning tools developed by Uptale allow to create field training in Virtual Reality in a few hours, giving you the potential to develop your team’s reflexes in all types of situations. We, at inTechBrew, were very impressed with that feature: with their cleverly engineered and user-friendly tools, anyone can easily create a 3D environment from data capture and build training scenarios.
Uptale has been able to remove the need to have a specific expert technician to use the software editor to process all the collected data to be able to use it. The Uptale platform is easy to pick up, to implement and to use on a daily basis, integrating within your current strategy with no headache.
With more than 200 clients across the world, and across industrial sector – including nuclear licenced companies such as CEA (France) – their product is particularly interesting simply because any person in charge of a plant, and in need of a training package, can use Uptale’s solution to create a detailed scenario to train oncoming visitors and/or external contractors. And the results are actually there.
Question asked to a worker undertaking an immersive safety induction course
USER CASE 1
CEA – Immersive security induction – Marcoule site, France
CEA – Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission – is one of the three main French nuclear site operators and has 9 nuclear licenced sites across France with the 3 main civil ones being Saclay, Cadarache and Marcoule.
With a workforce of more than 5,000 people including contractors and more than 30 regulated laboratories and research facilities – including reactors -, the CEA has to provide basic security training to anyone entering a specific facility.
To optimise these costs, Uptale has been asked to improve the induction programmes (as well as first aid), mobilising experts/facilities only when they are absolutely required for the programmes and extending the use of VR to offer training sessions at the entrance of the site, at the office or off-site like at home.
With bespoke training modules for each site and for specific facilities showing these key elements, Uptale achieved:
RP desk presented in a CEA module before visiting a CZ
- Immersive walkdowns in key locations;
- Highlights of PPE’s, entrance points, security/safety rules and the access process through interactive questionnaires;
- Inclusion of Welcome videos from key CEA’s personnel (e.g., head of plant, head of security…)
One year after deploying, the use of Uptale. by the CEA has demonstrated the following outputs:
- 8 times less time spent by trainers on a training session;
- 5 times less time spent by trainees on a training session;
- More than 900 hours of productive time saved.
Security visit in VR, text in French
USER CASE 2
Air Liquide – Immersive security induction – France
Air Liquide is one of the world leaders when it comes to gas supply. Even across nuclear sites, Air Liquide is quite often a provider.
Air Liquide decided to get a foot in the immersive learning world and used Uptale for immersive training within the plant, the labs, the offices but also outside in the parking lot.
Uptale offered scenarios where the trainee was able to make decision such as choosing the right PPE to enter in a lab, give priority to vehicle, assess the environment and identify risks in his / her surroundings. A short use case of this induction experience can be seen here.
Overview in a lab during Air Liquide’s training session
THE TECHNOLOGY
Uptale provides the most agile solution to quickly implement new training modules and to spread know-how autonomously, meaning that anyone from your workforce can use it from anywhere without the need to have an expertise in video production or AR/VR scenario making.
What differentiate Uptale from the competition is simplicity and efficiency. As an online no-code platform, it is truly child’s play to start producing your own training packages. If you are expecting a new batch of apprentices coming on site next week and don’t have any induction material at hand, well with Uptale, you could create a full immersive induction programme in a matter of days!
But that’s not all. In addition, Uptale decided to be technology agnostic when it comes to the camera and the device showing the training module. It means you can use any 360° camera and the trainees can be trained on a computer, smartphone, tablet, or a dedicated VR headset. Depending on the size of the scenario, a complete module can be designed in less than 3 days from design to implementation.
The Uptale platform allows you to create a fit-for purpose training module and also allows the instructor to receive feedback on how well the training session has performed.
Have a look at this video.
Amongst many, here are 3 extra examples of some non-nuclear Uptale’s users and the positive effect Uptale had on their training strategy:
- Stellantis (car manufacturer): 15% of time saved on training a manufacturing line worker;
- Total Energies (oil and gas): 3 times faster compared to how they used to do an on-boarding session to work on an offshore tanker;
- ALSTOM (railway): €500 saved per trainee during security training to work on the railway.
The specifications of the Uptale platform are as follow:
Authoring tools (to make the training modules):
- Intuitive and automated storyboarding editor;
- 360/180/stereoscopic media manager;
- Audio creation in more than 23 languages (perfect when you have a foreign delegation coming on site);
- Collaborative work with file versioning;
- Gamified and educational interactions (magic tags);
- More than 50 types of interactions (e.g., choose the right PPE);
- Custom sets of icons and loading / launch pages.
Select the right PPE (3D objects)
Creating a training module is extremely easy. You only have to import the media, select the routes, drag and drop some key elements such as tags on object, add some questionnaires (e.g., those asking to choose the right PPE) and work on different scenarios.
Everything can be done in only few hours, allowing anyone to create a training module.
With all these elements called gamification, the attention span is increased by 5 folds.
A simple admin interface
You can see a heat map and know where the trainees are looking most at.
Source: INTECHBREW
