Case study · Technical training
FIT: breaking barriers to technical training
Industrial robot and PLC practice in VR for FIT apprentices, without waiting for a physical robot.
- Customer
- FIT
- Sector
- Technology apprenticeships
- Training
- Industrial robotics and PLC
- Result
- 8 to 10 trainees at once
The challenge
Physical robots cost upwards of €30,000, take up space and can only be used by one or two trainees at a time.
Fastrack into Information Technology (FIT) delivers technology apprenticeships and upskilling across Ireland. Fixed lab schedules and travel to where the equipment was limited how many students could get hands-on practice, and for how long.
Without a safe way to repeat complex procedures, trainees could not build muscle memory before they reached the real robot.
The solution: a VR simulator for robots and PLCs
FIT and Mersus built a VR simulator on Avatar Academy with replicas of the industrial robot arms and PLC systems FIT trains on.
Trainees use hand tracking on Meta Quest headsets, with no controllers, and operate a replica of the teach pendant FIT trains on.
Trainee Daire Sherwin: “Everything moved the same… it took almost the same presses to do an identical movement in VR as in real life.”
The results
- 8 to 10trainees practising at once on the VR robot simulator, against one or two on physical equipment
When I went back, I’d already absorbed so much, unbeknownst to myself, so that when I tried the training content a second time, I was pacing through it much faster.
Peter Davitt, CEO, FIT
Walking into schools with a VR headset gives students a realistic impression of advanced manufacturing.
Peter Davitt, CEO, FIT, on taking the headsets into schools