Safety Training with Virtual and Augmented Reality

Business Value of VR and AR for Safety Training

VR can put trainees in situations they might face on any workday and teach them to think and respond correctly in various situations, from daily tasks to critical emergencies. It allows employees to be doubly sure they will be able to do these tasks safely, avoiding risks to their health or safety.

Let’s take a closer look at the key benefits of AR and VR safety training.

Benefits of VR for Safety Training

Safety and health are issues of utmost concern for many companies. And this is where virtual safety training is best employed, as it can easily prepare workers for a variety of possible challenges in an effective way.

Here’s a list of the key advantages of Virtual Reality for safety training:

• More efficient information processing. It can help the worker understand a particular situation better and learn to respond more quickly. VR is used to simulate a variety of extreme environments and dangerous situations, such as a natural disaster or car crash, so your employees can learn how to respond.
• Speed ​​up response to hazards and errors. For example, if you want to teach your employees to identify a potential hazard, such as a chemical explosion or a malfunctioning machine, you can use VR to show them how to deal with it in real life.
• Additional communication within the team. It can help workers experience teamwork and communication in new ways. You can use VR to let employees experience team training or simulations where they’re working with remote teams.
• Improved retention. In VR training, you can use engaging methods that go beyond traditional learning, such as various kinds of interactive elements, gamification, an achievements system, and so on. Even constantly repeating scenarios won’t be so tedious for students in a VR environment.

Benefits of Augmented Reality for safety training

Augmented Reality is bringing immersive technology to the safety training field in a big way.

Augmented Reality can be used to simulate hazardous workplace situations such as a chemical spill or fire. Letting your employees see what it’s like on the ground before entering a hazardous zone makes them more likely to respond appropriately.

The benefits of Augmented Reality for safety training are numerous. Let’s take a deeper look:

• Simpler implementation. AR can be used by any organization without the need for specialized equipment. Compared to Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality training sessions most often require only a smartphone and a mobile app.
• Versatility. AR can be used to train staff at all levels of an organization, from field workers to managers who are rarely present in the production area. Although they may have completely different tasks to do during the training, AR training sessions will meet them all. For example, the manager will most likely need to exercise soft skills to organize subordinates in a critical situation and evacuate them without panic or chaos. And workers will need applied knowledge: what to do if clothes catch fire, or a colleague was crushed by a machine tool, or the machine sparks.
• Ability to simulate emergency situations, to mitigate stress when there is a real incident. Employees learn how to behave in a stressful situation, how to handle situations where they feel threatened, and how to deal with this stress in a healthy way.
• Lower training costs. Statistically, the average cost of training per employee was reduced to $175 by using AR, thanks to online and remote training.

With these benefits in mind, it is clear why Augmented Reality is becoming increasingly popular as a training tool. Providing realistic simulation of real-world scenarios allows trainees to practice how to respond when they face similar situations in the real world.

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As a result, they are more likely to be comfortable and confident when confronted with these scenarios on the job. So, let’s take a look at what industries are using AR/VR training today.

In What Areas Can AR/VR Training Be Used?

Let’s take a deeper look at the main fields where these technologies are useful in employee safety training.

Construction

Construction sites are vulnerable to accidents ranging from falling objects to vehicle incidents to exposure to toxic fumes and potentially dangerous equipment. Many of these risks can be mitigated by providing employees with safety training.

Thanks to VR training, employees can learn how to use the new equipment correctly in a safe environment. Inexperienced employees can damage equipment if they don’t know how to use it properly, as well as injure themselves. Safety training sessions can prevent this from happening.

Oil and gas industry

AR safety training can be used to train employees who deal with checking gas meters and dealing with harmful substances leaking into the air or water, industrial fires, etc.

AR/VR training sessions allow workers to come up with an action plan for how to respond in these situations and minimize personal risks.

Food and beverage industry

With growing concerns about food safety and quality, employers need to train subordinates from an early stage on food handling and production practices. This can be done through AR/VR training programs, which bring employees into a virtual environment that duplicates the real-world one where they will be working.

Using AR/VR technology, employees can hone their skills for dealing with emergencies at a food processing plant or distillery before they encounter something similar in real life.

Logistics

In this area, AR/VR safety training is typically used for driver simulation training. You know that it can be hard to predict what may happen on the road.

This is where VR training sessions help employees learn how to respond during natural disasters, bad weather, or difficult driving situations, such as serpentine driving, accidents and emergencies, etc.

Companies that offer logistics services or specialize in manufacturing and have their own large warehouses typically have a variety of forklifts and other equipment traveling around the warehouse. They must drive carefully, not endanger pedestrians, carefully load goods, and so on. AR/VR training sessions can help drivers acquire these skills.

Of course, both technologies have a lot of benefits and are useful not only in the listed industries. However, there are also some risks to be aware of.

Risks and Considerations

Considering all the benefits of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality safety training, it bears mentioning that these powerful technologies have some disadvantages. And you can’t implement them until you are apprised of the main risks and considerations: