A New Way to Learn: Virtual Reality ULD Training

In an edition of the AviationPros podcast, Bob Rogers, vice president of ULD Care, spoke with Josh Smith, editor of Ground Support Worldwide, to discuss the advancements in ULD training, specifically a virtual reality (VR) enabled program provided by Airport College.

ULD training can be a difficult process, which is why Airport College developed a VR program to help make this education more readily-available to students.

"I mean doing a five-day training is, one - extremely expensive and time-consuming to people and, two - you can't bring the container into the classroom. And trying to take people down onto the cargo floor doesn't work because, A - it's too busy and, B - finding the thing you want to show them is difficult," Rogers says. "So the ability to harness virtual reality into this training model is awesome."

The virtual reality simulation asks students to identify issues with ULD containers. The students are able to walk around a virtual rendering of a ULD container and inspect the equipment.

"It shows an LD3 container and then a separate one which shows the palettes in there sitting on a dolly in the middle of a cargo terminal," Rogers says. 

The program educates students about details they should be looking for when inspecting a container. Then, they can start the testing process.

Using a cursor, students must point out the damages they see. When they think they have identified all issues, they can exit the test. The simulation will then notify the student if they have identified all the issues correctly.

"And if you didn't get them all, you can then go back and it shows you the ones you didn't get," Rogers says. "They are highlighted in red and the others are highlighted in green. And then you can take the test again."

Rogers says the training program does not require a huge investment to implement.

"There's no big infrastructure needs from beyond what any organization should already have. And you don't even actually need to have a particularly skilled instructor or anything because it's all online. You can just literally get them sat down, get them turned on, and sit back and let them get on with it."

To listen to the entire podcast, visit AviationPros.com/21205991