The Cave uses a joystick, powerwall and 3D glasses to bring aeronautic maintenance professionals and students into an immersive virtual world. The system can also connect to VR systems around the globe, allowing for collaboration on maintenance tasks and learning.
To reduce the risk to actual operational aircraft, the software also lets staff experiment with new maintenance techniques in real-time. Additionally, working on a VR aircraft will ensure that the staff is learning to fix the most up to date designs. This is a much better alternative to training with decommissioned aircraft.
Since 2011, AEROCAMPUS Aquitaine has become a leader in the EU with respect to training aeronautic maintenance staff. This led to a consortium created at the 2013 Paris Air Show aimed at creating a simulation VR cave to train maintenance staff. The consortium included ESI France, P3 ingénieurs (an engineering firm), Immersion (3D VR firm) and the Bordeaux aeronautic maintenance institute and technology center.
“Virtual Reality is a fantastic technology providing the most interactive teaching experience possible,” said Jérôme Verschave, Managing Director of AEROCAMPUS Aquitaine. “Not only does this new technology make learning fun, IC.IDO also enables the experimentation of real-life physics and the realistic rehearsal of maintenance procedures, without having to provide costly aircraft parts. Virtual Reality is ideal to keep up with the latest training data as it offers a greater reactivity with respect to frequent changes in aeronautic parts or processes.”
Source ESI Group.