4D Visual and Physical Safety Experience Training Cube

Since the beginning of 2022, Youngwoo Ind. Ltd. has launched its innovative 4D Visual and Physical Safety Experience Training Cube as an extension to the previous VR learning.?The 4D Safety Cube combines physical experience and virtual learning into an effective Hazard and Risk Awareness exercise. It provides computer grafic-created content and environments that accurately replicate real-life scenarios so that new skills and techniques can be learned and perfected.

The combination of the VR learning method with a real physical experience massively increases the understanding and memorization rate of the users while utilizing their 5 human senses during the training (Cognitive Learning). Unlike traditional VR training, the 4D Safety Cube integrates the cognitive learning part and provides an intuitive and entertaining application for the users that combines information transfer and entertainment exercises to Safety Infotainment at its best.

The concept is based on cognitive learning success. Cognitive learning is a style of learning that focuses on more effective use of the brain. To understand the process of cognitive learning, it’s important to know the meaning of cognition. Cognition is the mental process of gaining knowledge and understanding through the senses (taste, sight, hearing, smell, and touch), the experiences (learning by doing) and the thoughts (linked and combined). The cognitive learning process aims to chart the learning process for optimal thinking, understanding, and retention of what users learn. The main idea, therefore, is to use the human perceptual system by combining physical experience to increase the effectiveness of the training and to better retain what has been learned. With the 4 D Safety Cube you are able to experience different high-risk scenarios in one place and it is equipped with:

• moving elements that simulate a fall accident, collapse, or other working at height risks heavy machinery collision accident
• sound (noise hazards), vibration (hand-tools accidents), mist (chemical scattering), air (injection system), heat (fire accidents), and sensors to support the realistic accident experience
• virtual reality system (e.g., real workplace environment e.g., working on a scaffold platform) with computer graphic VR type or real event VR type

The VR part delivers an attractive learning event and increases knowledge transfer using a “real-world” experience without being at risk or in danger. Using real videos or animated digital content, the 4D Safety Cube can transport the users to different workplace sets or for instance create a role-play placing them as actors, leading them to make choices and naturally, having them experience the consequences of the decisions they have made. This kind of combined learning experience requires the users to actively participate and concentrate compared to the usual classroom or online training. The results in terms of knowledge retention and engagement are remarkable.

A study on, “The State of Workplace Safety Training” has found that companies struggle to find time for training and nearly a third can’t verify if their programs are effective. The results show that the biggest workplace safety training challenges were scheduling time for training (59.1 percent), verifying effective training (31.1 percent), and retraining, remediation, or refresher training (23.7 percent). Based on the results of the survey, technology plays a large part in more effective safety training. (*OHS Online article, Feb 17, 2021)

The visual and physical learning method expands awareness of workplace hazards and risks, increases awareness of unsafe acts and unsafe conditions, and significantly reduces accident rates through early identification of accident potential. Early recognition and intervention can only occur when users are aware of the hazards. This awareness becomes much more effective through practical and virtual learning.

The 4D safety cube can be transferred to other use cases by flexible change of the VR content (e.g., road safety, kids’ or pupils safety training, construction safety, industrial safety, production safety, etc.)

The innovation in the 4D Safety Cube is the unique design that combines physical (moving elements provide a slip, trip, and fall experience, a guardrail collapse where the guardrail physically gives way, an elevated work platform collapse where the ground beneath your feet begins to tilt forward, a stuck between heavy machinery experience, where you physically feel the pressure of being stuck, etc.), supportive dispensing units (air unit, mist unit, heat unit, sound unit, vibration unit) for the different content scenarios and visual (visible) elements with a portable VR Unit.

Lessons Learned from recent accidents, typical routine or maintenance activities, high-risk works, or dangerous disaster scenarios are recreated in the VR videos. Multi Content customized solutions to meet the individual requirements of each end-user.

Classic classroom training with PowerPoint slides and a lot of theory is a thing of the past. According to Wall Street Journal, 84% of presentation-based learning methods are perceived as boring! And, it is a human characteristic that people switch to energy-saving mode during boring activities and retain only a fraction of what comes at them. Future learning should combine the active involvement of users in the training process (digital and physical) in an attractive and realistic learning environment.

Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality combined with practical learning experiences is a very effective system for interventional and preventional learning that has a long-lasting impact on the behavioral change of users. The 4D safety cube has interchangeable hardware and software elements that make it extremely flexible in order to react to future development requirements by customers.

The individual values, safety culture, attitudes, perception, competencies, and patterns of behavior of users greatly influence their subjective perception of safety. In the 4D Safety Cube, cognitive perception serves as the decisive source of information. This means that the workers to be trained have to absorb the information via hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, or sometimes tasting in such a way that it can be recalled at any time in the best possible way.

The prototype 4D Safety Cube Training, installed at Hyundai Motors in South Korea in early 2022, significantly improves users’ perception, feelings, behavior, awareness, and attitudes toward workplace safety, reducing risky or dangerous situations and thus accident rates at Hyundai Motors.

Crucial to the 4D safety Cube is the nature of the interaction, which is so seamless that it feels completely natural - as if you really are at your workplace. The 4D Safety Cube provides a head-mounted display (HMD)-based intuitive type together with an innovative and customized training software that is intuitive and entertaining for the users (Hazard Hunting, Identification of hazards and risks, and Intervention and Prevention Game-Quiz).

The compact design and comfortable dimensions make the 4D safety Training cube an all-rounder in the field of safety infotainment.?Finally, we can say, the focus is on having fun and enjoying active learning, and trying things out. Because if everyone has fun while learning, the retention rate is automatically higher, and that in turn helps to get people excited about occupational safety and to move them where it is most sustainable ->Their behavior!