Access to the Internet can be spotty in Northern Canada. But heavy industry happens up there all the same, and Bit Space Development’s Daniel Blair wants to bring those workers the same access to XR-driven training and remote expert assistance as anywhere else enjoys. He chats with Alan about how he hopes to bring that about, in the first XR for Business of 2020.
Alan: Hey, everyone, it’s Alan Smithson here with the XR for Business Podcast. Today, we’re speaking with Daniel Blair, founder and CEO of a Canadian VR company called Bit Space Development. We’ll be discussing how virtual reality is revolutionizing industrial training and why it’s vitally important to define your key performance indicators to release you and your customers from the Pilot POC Purgatory. All that and more on the XR for Business Podcast.
With that, I want to welcome my good friend Dan to the show. Welcome to the show, Dan.
Daniel: Hey, thanks for having me.
Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. Let’s get into what you guys are doin; making serious purposes with VR and AR. What does that mean?
Daniel: Basically, what that means is we utilize immersive technologies to create games. But those games are used for training, education, and really serious purposes. We aren’t generally building applications that are going to be sold on Steam or sold on the Oculus store. But what we’re building are tools that integrate with clients infrastructure to help augment their workflow or create a safer workplace.
Alan: I know you guys have done a ton of things. One of them was a hand tool training simulator. Maybe walk us through what are these things, and how are people using them?
Daniel: For sure. Some of our most recent deployments include exactly what you’re talking about, the power tools simulator, which we created with a provincial organization here. That tool utilizes the room-scale six degrees of freedom tracking of any of the open VR-capable headsets, to put new entrants and kids on job sites and teach them about safe operation of power tools. And that can range from anything from a drill or a hammer drill or a circular saw. But we put some really interesting tools in there, like concrete saws — which would be extremely dangerous for a new entrant to use in real life.
Alan: I actually know all about that, cement saws. When I was a kid, my dad was grinding some bricks with a grinding wheel and the wheel shattered and cut both his legs wide open. And I remember as a kid, taking him to the hospital and them having to sew up right down to the bone. I mean, this was a real problem. I know this firsthand. This is a very, very unsafe tool if used incorrectly.
Daniel: Yeah. And the worst part of building these applications are the shock value photos that my clients will send me. I’ll wake up in the morning and they’ll say, “hey, this is a good example of why to learn about the safe operation of these tools.” And they’ll send me a photo of something similar to what happened to your dad, which is super unfortunate. And additionally to that, we’ve done a lot of work in the welding space, and on the more promotional side, our most recent deployment is called Level Up VR, which we developed with the USAF Workers of Tomorrow, an organization that promotes safe work sites and safe work practices for both employers and employees for youth. And that tool actually won an Impact Marketing Award for the use of the virtual reality tool in the campaign that was created to raise awareness. So we see both the marketing side and the education side.
Alan: That’s amazing. Safe working is something that we need to market to. Tr