Published on
June 11, 2024
In collaboration with Keuda, XR Studio Softability developed a completely new training experience to support VR-based logistics education at Keuda.
Softability is a leading provider of industrial X-Reality solutions in Finland. Softability XR Studio has expertise across the entire XR world. You are warmly welcome to explore their XR solutions and discover what Softability could offer to your educational institution or company through their showroom demos.
With over 10,000 students yearly and over 800 employees, Keuda is the fifth-largest vocational education and training provider in Finland. Keuda provides working life-oriented education and training to young people, adults, and companies in all fields of secondary vocational education and training (VET) and maintains 10 campuses in various towns. Keuda has been working with Softability XR Studio for years on various XR projects, so when Keuda wanted to enhance their logistics training with XR, Softability was the intuitive choice.
Keuda’s needs were summarized in these requirements and goals:
The purpose of the exercise is to illustrate to students how load placement affects axle masses, clearly using numbers and data.
Since much of the truck’s load capacity rests on the rear axle, a load placed too far back lightens the front axle, affecting maneuverability. Conversely, a load placed too far forward exceeds the maximum allowed front axle mass. According to road traffic regulations, the load must be placed so that at least 20% of the mass is on the steering axle and 25% on the driving axle.
“The impact of load placement on axle masses is a fairly essential part of a driver’s skill set. For some students, I’ve observed the issue of ‘slowness’ in practice; when the practice load is ready and axle loading is found to be incorrect, the original thought can easily be forgotten during the approximately one-hour period it takes to unload and reload. In the VR exercise, the same goods are loaded in different order in about two minutes. With this VR exercise, the focus is specifically on the impact of placement on weight distribution.” - Tuomas Hintikka, Logistics Teacher, Keuda
Softability began creating the exercise by constructing a realistic logistics center. They added a properly sized two-axle truck and various pallet loads of different weights for the creation of exercise sections. Empty pallet stacks are also included in the loads and are used to shift the center of gravity in the case of heavier loads. Typically, the loads should be supported against the front wall, so pallet stacks can be used to fill the gap between the front wall and the load if necessary.
In this setup and chosen truck type, there are twelve pallet positions. Securing the load after loading the pallets was left out of this project, but it is planned to be implemented as a separate section later on.
VR Builder is installed as an extension on top of Unity. The installation package includes a wizard that sets up the environment and other configurations for XR usage almost ready. The wizard even asks for the VR target devices that will be used to run the application (at Keuda, Meta Quest 2/3).
VR Builder platform is also very affordable to acquire, even with additional features, and there are no monthly or other licensing fees. “Very affordable” means mostly free in this context, with a few extension parts priced around €20 each if needed. In Keuda’s exercise, only two of these extensions, “States and Data” and “Track and Measure,” were used, costing a total of €40. Unity itself is also available for free, and that version is sufficient for using VR Builder.
One of the goals of the project was cost-effectiveness in all aspects, so Softability also took advantage of Unity’s Asset Store with its extensive selection of 3D models. From there, Softability selected models that were stylistically, functionally, and functionally suitable to create a realistic training environment. Only the loading dock and user interface graphics had to be made from scratch; the total cost of using modular 3D model libraries and other 3D models in the project was less than €200.
VR Builder uses visual authoring to build logic without the need to write any code. It is a node-based programming environment, with each node representing a step in the training process. Each step contains various behaviors and conditions as defined by the training creator, and when they are fulfilled, the process moves to the next step. The process can also contain loops. At its simplest, a step might only play a single sound sample, but one step can also contain dozens of functions.
The process can also be divided into several chapters at a high level, each containing a specific set of steps. Individual steps or multiple steps at once can be easily copied and pasted onto the workspace or into another chapter. An entire chapter can also be copied as a basis for a new section.
Why choose this approach? No-code eliminates the need for a coder entirely – this is, of course, a cost-reducing factor in production, but it also allows, for example, teachers to modify or create additional exercises entirely independently. A coder isn’t even needed to create a new application – it is built with the press of a button and can be installed on glasses with a simple text script over a USB connection.
“Great graphics and a nice location!”
“The impact of pallet placement became clear, at least faster than in the warehouse.”
“This doesn’t completely replace the warehouse, but it worked well in this regard.”
The exercise focuses on pallet loading, and it was simplified as much as possible. Driving pallets into the cargo space with a forklift or pallet jack would have been possible but unnecessary and time-consuming in this context. Softability used AI-generated speech in addition to text-based guidance, this allowed Softability to include a virtual teacher to guide the exercise and provide feedback to the student.
The main objective was to demonstrate mathematics and physics through practical means to the students, so pallets are moved into the cargo space simply by touching a weight label. The student sees the highlighted pallet position in turn and selects a suitable pallet for it – the pallet can be chosen entirely randomly, with only the target pallet position being fixed. This allows Softability to quickly conduct exercises with a larger number of students or to easily and quickly experiment with how different pallet placements affect axle weights.
VR Builder demonstrated both its capabilities and speed in this project. Creating logic in a node-based manner is not really slower than having to code everything from scratch. It’s even faster when considering editing iterations.
And as mentioned, all of this can be done entirely by the teacher with a little practice – or faster, after a good example use case made by Softability like in Keuda’s case. Additional hands-on workshop training day will of course help to further gain additional knowledge and all those important “best practices” tips on how to use VR Builder effectively.
“Many times, long ‘learning tool’ development time can be an issue in these projects. From idea to finished product, it may take over a year, when considering requests for proposals, investment proposals, and other decision-making processes. In my opinion, this project was a good example of how quickly things can also progress when everything is running smoothly. From idea to finished product, Softability managed to complete it in about eight weeks this time, including winter vacation weeks and Easter time.”
Tuomas Hintikka, Logistics Teacher, Keuda.
Below is a video showing how the VR exercise feels like from the perspective of the student.
In this collaboration, Softability and Keuda demonstrate how to benefit from adopting VR Builder par excellence. Not only were they able to speed up the creation process and reduce costs. They also improved collaboration during the creation process and by doing so, were able to include the subject matter experts more effectively.
Most notably, they did so on their first VR Builder project and without any significant external developer support!
For us, this is proof that VR Builder works as intended and indeed supports our mission to democratize immersive experiences.
This article has been previously published in similar form by Softability on their blog and has been co-authored by Mikael Bowellan (Art Director at Softability) and Mikko Luukkonen (Head of Sales at Softability).