Interactive Design and Collaboration
It is fairly common to use CAD-CAM type systems to visually design the environment and workflow in a way that allows workers to complete tasks more efficiently. daytaOhio goes a big step further. It allows the client to simulate the work area in a 3D visual environment and allow workers themselves to move through it and give feedback on how well the design removes impediments to their doing their jobs efficiently.
For example, an architect designing a new prison would invite a group of prison guards to a daytaOhio visualization lab to observe avatar prisoners in a newly designed cell block. The architect would adjust the design after corrections officers identified elements that help or hinder them from anticipating prisoner activity that could put staff in harm’s way.
A contractor designing the placement of equipment in a new dry cleaning plant allows machine operators to step around in a life-sized virtual work area that includes multiple presses and assembly lines and count the footsteps needed to move a garment through a succession of finishing steps. With subtle adjustments in the floor plan, the contractor helps the presser increase the number of garments she can press per hour by 20 percent.
Complex Interpretation and Knowledge Creation
Professionals who manage and interpret complex data to make life-saving or multi-million dollar decisions already use computer systems to help them complete their work. For instance, doctors use X-rays and MRIs to diagnose a patient’s ailment.
Geophysicists use seismic data collected from the floor of oceans to “read” and interpret the sound waves, which travel at different velocities as they pass through the different densities of rock, sand, salt, oil and gas.
“The challenge to geophysicists until now has been trying to analyze data represented with flat 2D images and then creating a 3D rendering. That becomes a very time-consuming task,” said geophysicist Mike Zebrowski of Hess Corp.
Particularly difficult to interpret are layers of salt sandwiched under hardened caps of shale or rock. The salt distorts the sound waves so that its depth is very difficult to estimate. But typically trapped under the salt domes are layers of crude oil and natural gas that the exploration team is trying to find.
Converting that data into interactive 4D visualizations of the layers below the seafloor allow geophysicists to more easily read and interpret the findings. In a program underway at daytaOhio, oil companies are particularly impressed with the speed at which interpretation of the data occurs, days rather than weeks as is the case with two-dimensional interpretations.
This project is as much a human performance program it is a complex data interpretation project and solves a big problem in oil and gas exploration. As explorers collect more data more rapidly, geoscientists who interpret the data need to speed up their work also.
Another benefit is that the immersive virtual environment can be created in college geophysics labs so more students can be trained to be ready to enter the field with a high level of knowledge.
