Immersive tech: what you need to know

If the everyday reality of getting the job done doesn’t already put enough on your plate, you will soon be expected to juggle multiple alternative realities. No, this is not about having some kind of existential crisis, but about getting to grips with cutting-edge immersive technologies. These include virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR), and there is huge hype around their functionality for project management.

It’s wise to be wary of tech buzz, but multiple realities are already working for project managers in a variety of ways.

For the most part, it’s MR that’s proving beneficial, but all three iterations
of immersive technology are being put into practice. But first, let’s be clear what these terms mean. VR is a completely immersive experience in an imagined world that feels, to a greater or lesser degree, real; it is often used in training applications. AR and MR are related in that they both overlay virtual elements onto the real world. But with AR those elements tend to be static, whereas in MR they are interactive and have more in common with the elements of a VR world.

Visualising projects in progress

Project managers who are using multiple realities are reaping the benefits, using the technology as an innovative way to visualise projects in progress. At multinational energy services company Wood, Adam Slimin, director of innovation and technology for Europe, says the company didn’t set out to adopt new realities, and nor did it have a particular problem that needed an innovative solution. Instead, once Wood understood the capabilities of the technology, applications grew organically.

One such application is about understanding the meaning of a decibel. While it might seem counterintuitive and a bit strange to think about trying to visualise a noise, that’s exactly what Wood has done. The company uses an Oculus Rift VR headset to help project managers really hear the impact of their projects, accounting for the landscape and where on-site they’re actually standing. A project manager can virtually walk around the site of a new factory, for example, and figure out how the machinery inside will sound to neighbouring buildings. The aim is for them to actually experience this, so that they can fully understand the noise-reduction solutions they could adopt.

“You used to get noise numbers in decibels,” explains Slimin. “It was traditionally a paper-based report structure, but this technology enhances that and makes those numbers real. It’s now part of the early stages of consultation.”

Wood also uses VR for training, helping acquaint staff with a location and its hazards before they set foot on-site. Using AR, the company has developed maintenance applications that allow technicians to practise performing the repair before they get to the job, which Slimin says “paid for itself on the downtime it saved”.

Helping simplify complex project planning

In project management, MR is typically applied in project planning – with its ability to communicate complex concepts proving particularly useful, says Robin Scott of immersive digital products developer Make Real. Not all stakeholders in a project are technically minded, he says. Often project managers will find themselves trying to explain how a project is evolving using a set of blueprints that appear to be in a foreign language to someone not familiar with them. Changes could be obstructed purely because of poor visual communication. Being able to actually show these changes, instead of requiring leaps of imagination from a CAD drawing, is incredibly useful, argues Scott.

At Arup, the engineering, design, planning, project management and consulting services firm, this technique was used to help stakeholders in the HS2 high-speed rail project.

“Aerial animations of the route were produced from helicopter film,” says David Edge, who leads Arup’s visualisation team in London. “Building on methodologies learnt from the film industry, we can deploy highly effective communications of the same data, represented photorealistically for parliamentary decision-making and public consultation.”

Communication and collaboration are also high on the list for Dave Rowe, technical manager at Keltbray. The business, which offers engineering, construction, demolition, decommissioning, remediation, rail and environmental services, has adopted MR tools to assist with project planning.

“We have found them to be an ideal platform for collaborative workshops, as normal human interactions can take place with the added benefit of overlaid digital information,” says Rowe. But, as ever with new technologies, adoption rates and people’s willingness to engage with the changes are key challenges. Keltbray ensures it has 2D outputs, such as digitised CAD drawings, that are synchronous to its MR tools to allow everyone to stay involved.

A related challenge lies in the level of digitisation across a project and elements of backwards compatibility, says Wood’s Slimin. For example, if a project manager is engaged to work on an existing structure that doesn’t have digital blueprints, it becomes much more difficult to use any immersive technology tools in planning, training or execution.

Task first, tool second

Immersive technology experts who help project managers with these tools all have the same advice – think about the job that needs doing rather than the tool you’d like to use.

“Due to its novel and ‘flashy’ nature, there is a temptation to utilise MR hardware in projects even though it does not necessarily provide any benefits over using other [traditional] methods,” says Jake Rigby of international design, engineering, science and risk management consultancy BMT.

“With any new technology, the challenge is always to remain focused on solving the right problem, rather than getting distracted by the tech alone,” agrees Claire Fram, who leads the delivery of digital prototypes and products in production at Arup.

Make Real’s Scott says that, quite often, the answer to a project manager’s challenges lies in everyday technology like the smartphone in their pocket, not a raft of shiny new VR helmets. He cautions project managers to really think about their use cases and whether adopting multiple realities will save time and money or increase stakeholder engagement.

It can come down to simple practicalities. “There’s no point in having an AR program on a tablet if the engineer has to wear huge gloves on-site,” Scott points out. “If you can’t articulate why this new technology is adding value to your project, then why are you doing it?”

But it is evident that there are strong use cases out there and, with enabling technologies just around the corner, there will be even more reason to look at how immersive tools can simplify project management. The upgrade of mobile networks to 5G will allow more computing power to reside back in the office without latency in delivering the virtual experience over the new superfast connection. Headsets could get as small as a pair of glasses and, crucially, cheaper. Advances in wearable technology will eventually aid in the manipulation of virtual environments and how ‘real’ an alternate reality tool feels.

Virtual becomes reality

The most important change will be increased usage. The information management side of a project manager’s job, for example, has rapidly shifted in a digital world to include building information modelling, team modelling, data environments, digital twin projects and cloud-based data platforms.

Immersive technologies are already making their mark in design, project planning and training. The future will hold new opportunities to develop remote-expert tools that allow engineers to weigh in from their office, and design solutions where more of the virtual world can be manipulated instead of just represented in 3D. It’s a world of project management where every new job has a full virtual mock-up as a matter of course.

Brid-Aine Parnell is a science and technology journalist

What’s around the corner for immersive technologies?

There are a number of evolving technologies that will have a direct impact on the usability of immersive tools

5G

The next generation of wireless networks will bring a step change in connection speeds and, perhaps more importantly, a huge reduction in latency – the delay in information transmission. For immersive technology, this means that the computer that’s actually running the simulation could be located in a building somewhere, with the images and sounds of the virtual world being updated and transmitted to the user with no lag. The result could be ‘headsets’ that are nothing more than a pair of glasses or even contact lenses.

Wearables

As wearable technology advances and becomes more able to read signals from human bodies, it will be able to make virtual experiences feel more real. Clothes could eventually provide full-body haptic feedback to make an environment feel real in every way. Down another avenue of research, there are wearables on the market that use electrical impulses to help control nausea by affecting neural pathways in the body. They are usually aimed at sufferers of motion sickness, a common side effect of virtual reality experiences.

Artificial intelligence

As artificial intelligence advances, so will the capabilities of virtual worlds to respond to and learn from human users. Instead of programming the environment for a finite number of responses, in a training tool for example, the virtual world will change and evolve according to how it is used, backed by machine-learning algorithms.