Taking a ‘virtual’ walk through a forest
VERY SOON, YOU COULD BE WALKING through a forest, checking on standing trees and scouting harvesting sites, without actually being there in person.
Or, a technician will be able to guide you through a repair to equipment in the forest whilst viewing 3D images from a location hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.
Welcome to the world of Virtual Reality. You know, those goggles that allow you to be transported into a world where everything looks real, but isn’t.
Virtual Reality, or VR for short, is already being used in computer games, but the future of this technology is about to touch the lives of many people in business, including forestry.
A pair of VR demonstrations at last month’s ForestTECH 2017 conference highlighted some of the applications we are likely to see in the very near future.
VR is an extension of the way training institutions currently use machine simulators to train people to operate equipment before they’re let loose on the real thing. But the images are in 2D and often not life-like.
In some of the latest VR applications that have already been created, such as one being used by Hiab to allow a driver to operate a log-loading crane from inside his cab, the images seen inside the goggles are from cameras placed high on the vehicle, which work in unison with the hand controls moving the jib and grapple.
In others, an electronic image is created to provide a 3D view.
Lance Bauerfeind, of Pepper Creative, says VR can transport a person into a 3D world that is a replica of the real thing, where they also have the ability to interact with what they are viewing. In this way, someone can be placed inside the virtual world.
It can become a more effective training tool, not just for beginners who are getting to know a machine or process, but also for qualified technicians who need to be able to rehearse a procedure before attempting the real thing.
“Being able to repeat a procedure until you are competent is a major step towards doing the real thing,” he says.
Mr Bauerfeind’s company has already created VR technology for use in the dairy industry, providing a virtual replica of a modern milking shed that off-site engineers can use to monitor systems in real time, test and troubleshoot a process remotely and see a system working.
Another application he forsees with VR is where an expert who is located in a town or city far away can ‘see’ into a process or machine and talk someone through a repair or maintenance procedure on site. So, if a fault develops in a harvesting machine in a remote forest, a techie might be able to talk through a solution to the operator using VR.
And don’t worry about looking like a nerd, Mr Bauerfeind says the cumbersome VR goggles that are currently in use are likely to be replaced by streamlined glasses or even contact lenses in future.
Meanwhile, a VR application that is specific to forestry is being developed by a team at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Tasmania.
Dr Winyu Chinthammit, Deputy Director of the Laboratory, says his team has taken LiDAR point cloud information to create a 3D image of a forest that can be walked through using VR technology.
Even with high resolution LiDAR, there are still gaps in the images, which meant that the trunks of some trees disappeared during early trials with the new system.
Experimenting with aerial and land-based LiDAR imagery, Dr Chinthammit and his team discovered that when they increased the size of the pixels the forest “came to life” and it was easier to navigate through the virtual forest and see the ground, trees and even foliage details.
Using a reference point, a forester wearing the VR goggles could measure trunk girths and gain other aspects from within the forest, without actually setting foot in it physically.
Using this technology, foresters could check on blocks that have had recent LiDAR measures and see how they compare with previous images, to gauge growth. Forest engineers, could also use VR to obtain on-the-ground views as part of their planning for roads, skid sites and yarder landings.
NZL