Charlie Taylor | August, 2020

Irish virtual reality remote training simulation provider sees surge in demand

VRAI, a Dublin-based virtual reality remote training simulation provider, has secured €1.2 million in seed funding from angel investors and Enterprise Ireland.

Published on irishtimes.com, read the article here.

Pat O’Connor | July, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a shift in how we work, but for frontline workers and other hazardous and essential professions, remote work is simply not an option. In the new professional landscape, Virtual Reality is the key to training and preparation, writes Pat O’Connor Managing Director at VRAI

While the adage “never waste a good crisis” is often mis-attributed to Winston Churchill, it is more likely derived from the work of the American political theorist Saul Alinksy, in his book “Rules for Radicals”. Alinksky was writing about community activism and the opportunity that crisis can offer to break the status quo and affect change.

In the midst of a financial crisis, the instinct of many is to rush towards safety or to become conservative; for many others it’s simply about survival. For investors, that instinct can be very different. They rush towards the opportunity that the crisis can offer them. Following the financial crash and subsequent recession of 2008 – 2010, some very successful companies were founded and funded, including Whatsapp, Uber, Airbnb, Instagram and Dropbox.

On the face of it there isn’t a lot that these brands have in common, other than being broadly digital companies. I would suggest that the common thread between these companies is that they were all tapped into the zeitgeist during the last recession. They saw the paradigm shift that was moving concepts from the fringes to the core i.e. giving people the choice to have what they wanted, when they wanted it.

So then, what is likely to be the paradigm shift resulting from the COVID-19 crisis?

For one, there is the rapid shift towards Remote Work solutions since governments around the world directed us to isolate to stop the spread of COVID-19. The continued expansion of the digital workplace and the tools needed to enable trading, production and manufacture at a distance now seems inevitable. Up until now, planning for remote work could be seen as a low priority for many businesses, dismissed as a perk for the millennial workforce. After COVID-19, however, businesses without a robust company-wide remote work plan, one that can be actioned on short notice, will be considered reckless and may not survive the approaching economic challenges we face.

Video conferencing has allowed business to continue functioning and people to continue interacting, but it has limitations, and isn’t the panacea for all remote working needs.

For people who work in risky or remote operational environments, such as front line medical staff, offshore wind technicians, or even workers in manufacturing settings, there is a need to train, prepare for and mitigate risk. Traditional e-learning tools cannot prepare someone to climb a high voltage electricity pylon in a storm, or fix a blade on a 110m tall wind turbine 100km off the North coast of Scotland.

Where can business leaders look to for guidance on how to prepare their employees in this unpredictable world? I believe the answer is the military. For decades, armed forces in many countries have been using simulation training as a way to replicate risky, remote and difficult to replicate scenarios.

Until recently, military simulation training was often reserved for high value roles like fighter pilots, or ships’ captains, who trained in “sim centres”. These sim centres had traditional simulators with complicated hydraulics and expensive replicas of the real world equipment.

What we are seeing now is a shift whereby this type of training is being provided as a virtual simulation at the point of need. The training is contained in a VR headset that a soldier can use while in a hangar waiting for rotation flight, or a winchman can use during a “weather day”, or a ship’s engineer can use while hundreds of kilometres away from the naval college.

The added value of VR simulation is that its inherent data capture capability can be used to provide deep insight into how individuals learn and perform. The addition of physiological sensors can allow you to know not just what people do, but also how they feel when they do it. These data-driven insights can transform our ability to reduce risk for workers and ensure they are confident in performing hazardous tasks that they will face in reality.

The shift towards simulation training was happening in the military prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has since begun to accelerate, as it is not an option for a military to be unprepared. Military commanders consider that they have a “duty of care” to train and prepare their troops appropriately; anything else would be a dereliction of duty.

This duty of care must now also extend towards business executives, to ensure their employees are prepared remotely in authentic, memorable and measurable simulated environments. The technology is now there to enable it, and the situation we now face demands it.

Published on uktechnews.co.uk, read the article here.

Elaine O’Regan | Business Post | May 24th, 2020

VR simulation company sees opportunities around remote working during the pandemic

Dublin start-up VRAI plans to raise €850,000 to fast-track plans to offer virtual reality (VR) training to large employers with staff who are working remotely because of Covid-19.

The VR simulation company has appointed Davy Corporate Finance to manage the funding round.

Niall Campion, VRAI’s founder, said the company has developed a training platform for employers operating in “high hazard” sectors such as power generation, aviation, defensive security and manufacturing.

Campion said the Hazardous Environment Awareness Training (Heat) system could be used to train employees working in risky or remote environments.

“The last Heat project we did was with one of the big pharma manufacturers here in Ireland. They used it to train their staff to work more safely on the factory floor,” he said.

“We see opportunities now around Covid-19, because we know there’s value in VR training and we know there’s value in remote training.

“We thought the market was about three years away from this becoming ubiquitous, but I think people can now see the value in not having to travel to train.”

VRAI secured funding of €575,000 last June from state agency Enterprise Ireland (EI) and private investors including former Bord na Móna chief Gabriel D’Arcy, who joined the start-up in the role of chairman.

Pat O’Connor, former deputy director of public relations at the Irish Defence Forces, has since joined VRAI as joint managing director

“Before Pat joined we were doing a lot of VR marketing experiences, and we then saw this opportunity to focus more on training,” said Campion.

“To move into that area, we needed to take on investment. We wanted ‘smart money’ from private investors who had experience in the high-hazard environments we want to target.

“Gabriel started his career in the Irish Army and worked for the UN. Pat spent 20 years in the Defence Forces.”

A video editor by trade, Campion set up VRAI in 2017 and focused initially on VR and augmented reality (AR) experiences for businesses and government organisations.

He worked with Samsung last year, developing an AR app for the launch of the new Galaxy S10 range. He has also developed a VR cable repair training experience for the ESB and another training experience for the UN’s counter-IED operations.

“VR is a great way of training in high-hazard environments, but also of capturing data on what people are doing. Our strategy has been to build out that data pipeline,” he said.

“We got our first data customer last July when we developed a training experience for IAG Cargo, which has a huge warehouse at Heathrow. It is a hazardous environment because they run a lot of machinery through it, and it’s busy, so onboarding new employees was a challenge for them.

“We upsold them on the data capture and they improved staff retention as a result. They did a staff survey and people’s understanding of how the warehouse worked went from five out of ten to 8.5 out of ten,” he added.

VRAI was named the winner of the Dublin City Enterprise award in early March and plans to raise up to €850,000 by the end of July.

“I don’t want to give the impression that we are flying,” Campion said. “Some of the contracts we were due to start work on when Covid-19 hit have been paused, but we do see an opportunity at the same time because more people are now seeing the value of being able to work and train remotely.”

VRAI is a high potential start-up client of Enterprise Ireland.

“We probably wouldn’t be where we are without EI,” Campion said.

“In the last month, I’ve spoken to the head of data at Facebook and the head of learning at Microsoft, both through EI contacts. EI have said that they are interested in coming in again on this round. All of our existing private investors are interested and we’re working with Davy Corporate Finance to open this out to a broader pool of investors.”

Published on businesspost.ie, read the original article here.

Stephen Larkin | ThinkBusiness.ie | MAY 29, 2020

Pat O’Connor, managing director of VRAI, talks to ThinkBusiness about his company’s growth and why Covid-19 may push plans forward by a couple of years.

How and when was VRAI started?

Niall Campion founded the company in August 2017 making virtual reality (VR) content initially, and then added augmented reality (AR) services too as our customers looked for it. I joined VRAI last year to help raise a €575,000 seed investment round through Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Start-Up (HPSU) programme in order to build our data driven VR simulation platform called HEAT.            

What is the problem you are trying to solve and the size of the market you are addressing?

We help large organisations whose activities are risky, remote and rare to train in a more authentic, memorable and measurable way. For example, we are working with ESB International, the Irish Defence Forces, IAG in Heathrow Airport and the United Nations in Somalia https://vimeo.com/364022836

The Fortune 500 spent $100 billion last year on training and safety and yet the majority of those companies suffered a death or serious injury in the last 18 months. So why is that? The majority of companies are using traditional methods such as lectures to deliver training, even though we know that this is ineffective and inefficient.

We believe that the maturing of technologies such as VR, AI and IOT has provided an opportunity to revolutionise how we train our people.

What is your core product and service about and how does it work?

HEAT stands for Hazardous Environment Awareness Trainer and is a data driven VR simulation platform that allows people to train in a more authentic, memorable and measurable way. Simulation training was once the preserve of pilots and surgeons, HEAT now makes high quality simulation training available to a much wider audience and it can be conducted remotely using the latest VR headsets.

The platform allows you to create individual training profiles that can track progress and performance over time; it provides fully immersive virtual training environments that allow people to train virtually as if they are doing the task in real life.

HEAT then uses our data pipeline to capture and analyse data in order to provide reports on performance and predictive analytics i.e. what activity in VBR is most closely correlated to the organisation’s desired outcomes.

https://vimeo.com/364019789

Who are the founders of the company and what are the experiences that encouraged you to become an entrepreneur?

Niall Campion is a leading VR subject matter expert on the EU expert panel for immersive technology, with 15 years’ experience creating award winning content for the BBC, Disney, Netflix, RTE and Brown Bag Films. His work has been commissioned by the UN in Somalia to simulate an IED training experience with analytics.

My background is in the military having worked for 20 years as an operational unit commander and in communications and organisational strategy development. I served operationally in Syria, Liberia, Lebanon and Israel. I was also instrumental in the Irish Defence Forces initial adoption of VR.

Niall and I were classmates in our undergrad degree and we always wanted to find a way to work together, VRAI seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine our experience to do something that matters and have a real impact.

What are your impressions of the start-up ecosystem in your region and in Ireland in general?

I think Ireland is a great place to start a company with great supports through the Local Enterprise Offices and Enterprise Ireland’s HPSU programme. There are so many supports if you have a business idea that’s thought through and makes sense from grants to match funding, mentors and access to EI’s global network of market experts. We were delighted to be part of Google’s Adopt a Start-Up programme – this really rocket fueled our data pipeline development.

Ireland is also the European HQ for many large multinational companies that it provides a route to market that I’m sure can be more difficult elsewhere.

What are your growth plans?

While COVID-19 has been a challenge for everyone, I believe it has also changed the workplace forever. Where we saw the market being in three years in terms of virtual training needs, we believe is more likely now in 12 months. In order to be ready to deliver for our customers we intend to raise a second seed round this summer to bring our investment raised to €1.15m in the past year.

This investment will allow us to grow our team from 10 to 20 in the next 12 months, adding key experience to our teams. This will allow us to add the product features we know our customers want as well as spent time meeting and speaking to our customers.

What are the biggest mistakes or lessons you have learned so far?

We are learning every day. When you are working in technology innovation, there is often no rulebook or clear instruction manual to follow. We trust and empower our people to find ways to solve problems. In that environment mistakes are inevitable, the important thing is that the company learns from the mistakes made, iterates and improves the process.

Is there anything you’d do differently?

I should have paid more attention during the finance module when I was in college.

What advice do you have for fellow founders?

Find a business partner whose skills are different but whose values are similar to yours – it’s great to share the experience, the challenge and important to avoid biased decision making.

Spend as much time as possible in the market talking to your customers or potential customers and find out what challenges they have and fix them. It’s not about the technology, it’s about addressing your customers actual needs.

For your company to flourish, your teams must feel a sense of purpose, mastery and empowerment – it’s your job to create that environment.

Published on thinkbusiness.ie, read the original article here.

IRISH TECH NEWS | MAY 11, 2020

With the world exploring new ways to safely work and train, what of those who work and train in high-risk environments as standard? The key to this new normal is VR training, writes Pat O’Connor, managing director of VRAI.

For those working from home in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, the videoconferencing provider Zoom has become a household name. The global work-from-home experiment prompted by COVID-19 has highlighted the benefits of these remote working tools. It has also illustrated the sophisticated technology that was available to us all along.

Zoom will be hailed as a company that prospered during the crisis. Looking back on previous economic crashes, there is a commonality between the companies that swam and those that sank.

As we progress into financial uncertainty caused by COVID-19, many businesses will become conservative in order to survive. Cutting costs, scaling back and bunkering up seems the safest approach. However, if we compare this to the crash of 2008, the most successful companies were those that chose to adapt and embrace change, rather than let the situation decide their faith. Whatsapp, Uber, Airbnb, Instagram and Dropbox were all founded during this time and went on to become global powerhouses.

On the face of it, there isn’t a lot that they have in common, other than being broadly digital companies. For me, the common thread between them is their ability to adapt through the last recession. They spotted a trend of consumerism of people knowing what they want and when they wanted it. With adaptability rather than reclusion at the forefront of their business model, they were able to become some of the most successful companies in the world.

So, what kind of consumer trends are likely to arise as a result of the COVID-19 crisis?

Since countries around the world went into lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, the shift towards remote working tools has been rapid. Once the crisis abates, that expansion of the digital workplace is likely to continue. Prior to today, planning for remote work was a low priority for many businesses, largely sidelined as a perk sought for the millennial workforce. In the post-COVID-19 landscape, however, businesses who do not adequately prepare their company to work remotely will be considered reckless and may not survive the approaching economic challenges we face.

Video conferencing has allowed business to continue functioning and people to continue interacting, but it has its limitations – especially for those who operate in risky or remote environments. For front line medical staff, offshore technicians and even numerous manufacturing settings, there is a need to train for, prepare for and mitigate risk.

After all, traditional e-learning tools cannot prepare someone to climb a high voltage electricity pylon in a storm or fix a blade on a 110m high wind turbine 100km off the North coast of Scotland.

Where can business leaders look to for guidance on how to prepare their employees in this unpredictable world? I believe the answer is the military. The military has been using simulation training for decades as a way to replicate risky, remote and difficult to replicate scenarios. Sometimes the simulation was in order to avoid the prying eyes of adversaries, sometimes simulation was about cost-saving and sometimes it was simply about utility – simulation training was better and easier to do than traditional training.

Until recently, military simulation training was often reserved for high-value roles like fighter pilots, or ships’ Captains, who trained in “sim centres”. These sim centres had traditional simulators with complicated hydraulics and expensive replicas of the real-world equipment. There is now a paradigm shift occurring in military training towards providing virtual simulation at the point of need. The training is contained in a VR headset that a soldier can use while in a hangar waiting for rotation flight, or a winchman can use during a “weather day”, or a ship’s engineer can use while hundreds of kilometres away from the naval college.

The added value of VR simulation is that its inherent data capture capability can be used to provide deep insights into how individuals learn and perform. The addition of physiological sensors can allow you to know not just what people do, but also how they feel when they do it. These data-driven insights can transform our ability to reduce the risk for our employees and ensure they are confident in performing the tasks that they will face in reality.

Published on irishtechnews.ie, read the full article here.

We have gathered a range of Irish start-ups using AI in different industries, including music, VR, HR, fintech and customer service.

Kelly Earley  |  Silicon Republic  |  12th March 2020

VRAI won the award for its HEAT platform, which enables organisations to train employees in high-risk activities.

Kelly Earley  |  Silicon Republic  |  12th March 2020

By Pat O’Connor, Co-Founder & Managing Director, VRAI

Virtual Reality – The Ultimate Safety & Training Technology

VRAI launches first female only tech apprentiship