Přinášíme vám exkluzivní rozhovor s šéfem Lanner Group – Andrew Aitknem. Společnosti, jež je lídrem v oblasti dynamické simulace a virtuální reality. Mj. Andrew byl jeden z hlavních spíkrů na mezinárodní konferenci technology.future a my jsme ho vyzpovídali, kde je virtuální realita v podnikání dnes a kde bude za pár let.

andrew-aitken

1. Lanner is the leading supplier of SW for predictive simulation, but in the last period has introduced immersive Virtual Reality to your product. Can you explain why you went in this direction and how your business achieved this to our readers?

Technology has advanced such that VR is more accessible to business; its value in shortening and improving the design process for products is well proven. VR can also be applied to operator training and facility design, the next natural step was to apply VR to dynamic process optimisation within a facility. We decided to partner with Virtalis, leaders in visualisation technology, to provide VR capability across our technology spanning simple 3D on the desktop to full immersive stereoscopic VR in CAVEs and headsets.

2. How have you developed these new skills alongside other modelling and analysis skills?

VR is an enabling technology that sits alongside other modelling skills. It cannot be seen as a separate capability with a different team. Rather than having a separate VR department at Lanner, we have recruited specialist VR professionals to lead our skills and used them to wider the skills of our professional services team, which delivers simulation solutions to our clients. This team has a wide range of skills including considerable 3D modeling capabilities. The ability to apply an immersive VR or augmented visualisation to a WITNESS model has been automated so that basic VR expertise is not necessarily required to achieve stunning 3D models.

3. Virtual reality – seriously reality or in the meantime only fiction?

It’s happening now! We are working with major companies to support the creation of their VR models. These models help them get the necessary understanding and buy-in to future state business operations to drive new business investments and then help commisioning new facilities at a pace previously unheard of. A good example is Lanner’s customer Hayward Tyler, who provide equipment to the Nuclear and energy sector. They have been using VR alongside simulation modelling to create powerful dynamic models with creat visualization. They have recently won many awards for thier innovation using these technologies and the UK Royal Family paid a visit this month to recognise their achievements. Leading firms recognise that VR is now a serious technology for supporting key decisions and creating business value.

4. What virtual reality actually offer for business?

Virtual reality offers tremendous benefits at a strategic level – ensuring that all stakeholders (including investors) understand the current and proposed business operations – and at a technical level to ensure that issues are identified and addressed within the virtual world before the risk of making major investments is taken. Imagine being able to run your process in the virtual world prior to investing and building a new facility. Then seeing what impact this will have on customer performance, stock levels etc. Operators can be better trained in advance of their arrival at a new facility to ensure that the facility optimally operates and delivers for the customer from day 1.

Witness pro dynamickou simulaci

5. Because today virtual reality start to be part of our life, for which industry sections and companies is VR suitable choice?

This technology has a big effect when the decision is complex, the risk of getting the decision wrong is high or the solution/design proposed is a completely new concept. If a new process is very different to anything that has previously existed VR can help them provide early insights and experience. Sectors that are moving fastest into VR are tech-savvy companies who are familar with VR/CAD for product design already and therefore more confident that they can adopt a similar approach for facility and process simulation. We are seeing Aerospace, Automotive, Mining and additive manufacturing industries using VR in to help simulate new facilty designs. In all cases, communication and seamless understanding across different business functions are important benefits from any VR implementation.

6. And what about price? Let say, I would like to build new production hall, how much money I will need for study in VR?

The price always depends on what standard of visualization you want to achieve. It could be £8k or £80k depending on the customer’s needs and the level of detail and precision. Do the 3D shapes need to be developed from zero or do they already exist in a CAD system? Which areas of the prodiction hall needs to visualised in full detail? What presentation is required? – normal 3D on screens? or fully immersive VR? The scoping questions are similar to that for any of our simulation projects and so it is important to conduct a short scoping phase at the start to anser these questions and deliver the client’s requirements as cost effectively as possible.

7. And what about the difference between 3D and VR? What are the benefits and disadvantages of this solution? When you recommend to use model in 3D and when in VR?

Many technologies out there with a ‚VR‘ name are not actually VR – wearing a pair of goggles may give the feeling of an immersive experience but in some cases it’s really just 360 degree video or photo footage (e.g. Flikr VR) you are looking at. 3D objects are the building blocks for creating a VR world, but a level of simulation is necessary to create an environment that mirrors the real world in different states. Can you travel around and watch different scenarios occurring that reflect real behaviours? If the answer is yes then you’ve gone beyond a 3D visualization and moved into the virtual world. Lanner are a simulation company who use their WITNESS platform to create the necessary real world dynamic intelligence within their simulation models for customers. We start here as this is where decisions and value come from. VR is added when the customer’s communications and decision requirements fit the criteria mentioned above.

8. Could you please specify concrete example when your customer use model with VR?

handled in Q3 …provide the Hayward Tyler case study & latest video http://www.lanner.com/insights/customer-stories/hayward-tyler.html#sthash.FGOj0DAY.dpbs

9. And what about results? Can you specify example when the results was better only because you used model with VR?

http://www.lanner.com/insights/blog/a-lottery-win-reaction-to-hayward-tyler-s-3d-model.html#sthash.Lej3B52C.dpbs

10. What do you think about future of simulation with VR? Where do you see VR next year and where after ten years?

With the growing adoption of Industry 4.0 and the ‚Internet of Things‘, we are clear that more companies will need to integrate better methods of visualizing their processes and performance more dynamically. In the future senior decision makers will sit together with VR headsets on to evaluate the costs and risks of making different business decisions in a mixed reality world. By that we mean that performance issues in the real world will be rapidly passed to the virtual world for dynamic assessment and decision-making, with optimised decisions being then passed for real world execution. This transition between real and virtual world will become progressively faster and seamless with many decision stages being automated through optimisation and eventually Artificaial Intelligence, which is still in an embryonic state with respect to large scale enterprise decisions. This mixed reality will give new, higher levels of insight into existing business conditions, improved predictive problem identification and the foresight to take proactive action to ensure business performance is dynamically optimised.