The Royal Air Force (RAF) is trialing Hololens 2 headsets to aid in maintenance, repairs, and operations (MRO) as part of their RAF eXperimental (RAFX) division. Engineers at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) are leading this charge with the cooperation of officers at RAF Leeming in North Yorkshire.
Squadron Leader Marcus Ramsden at RAF Leeming mentioned “because of its use in gaming, this is a technology that new RAF recruits are completely familiar with”, highlighting a need to modernize operations within RAF. They added that most of the documentation they work with was written in the 1970s with inconsistent updating. In addition, carrying multiple manuals, upwards of 400 pages each, in a busy environment is both cumbersome and no longer necessary.
As part of RAF’s Astra program focusing on replacing outdated systems and digitization using cutting-edge technology, mixed reality (MR) can be employed to not only clean up paper clutter but also to better train with visual representations of instructions. MR can completely revolutionize training by keeping a consistent up-to-date database that is available right in front of trainers and trainees and procedures can be supervised by subject matter experts anywhere in the world. The engineers at AMRC approached this by learning how their MRO is currently done, ingesting the paper documentation, creating computer-aided design (CAD) assets from the Hawk T Mk 1 on campus, and generating new work instructions with all the new assets on a Hololens 2 headset.
Mixed reality training is being adopted in this way across many industries and more and more are realizing its potential to streamline and enhance productivity. The future for XR is certainly looking bright.
