SIMULATION
SIMULATED OR REAL?
Training for overhead crane operators used to involve the student spending valuable time on a real crane and getting hands-on experience in the real world. Today, training on virtual reality (VR) simulators with digital models of the crane and its environments are increasingly playing their part in sharpening the skills of the operators of the future. Julian Champkin reports.
verhead cranes need operators. Operators need to be trained. Training a student takes time and practice; and all the time that the student is learning on an overhead crane, he or she is occupying the said crane. This means that it is unavailable for its full-time job of moving loads around the plant at full speed and high efficiency to keep production going, the factory functioning, the end- product in actual production and the whole enterprise operating and profitable. There used to be no real way round this. There is now. Virtual reality, or VR, can make digital models of the crane and its operations; students can train not on a real-life expensive crane but on a screen or a panel of screens in front of them, or even by wearing a set of VR goggles. Simulator training began with hesitant steps in the early 2000s. It has progressed since then, in affordability, in the realism of the experience and in popularity. The advantages are many and clear.
O
Students learn in a classroom on CMLab’s Intellia system.
Gaining an edge First, as we have said, it frees up the real crane for its proper use. Second, it gives the student as much
unlimited time as he or she needs to learn. Third, the lessons are repeatable, standardised exercises that can be practiced as many times as needed and that give results that can be objectively assessed by the system as well as by a human instructor. And fourthly, all of these factors make for great economies for the employer who needs to train new operatives. “Suddenly, there was an option that made training
faster, more affordable, and – most importantly – safer than any other approach to date,” says Danial Alizadeh, chief product officer at CM Labs, who have been making such systems for more than 25 years. Even the early versions, he says, gave significant
improvements over traditional training methods. Productivity increased and so, interestingly, did recruitment efforts. If operating cranes seemed an old-fashioned job, dirty and noisy and failing to attract youngsters (which it most certainly was, with a notable shortage of new recruits having been recently visible in the sector) then making it digital, even just in the training stages, made it much more attractive to the generation that has grown up in front of computer screens. Since then, advances in computer graphics,
processing power and display technology have enhanced the capabilities of such systems. One such system is from CM Labs itself, which has recently introduced a new generation of training technology known as Intellia. It is tempting to think that the technology – the video screens, the VR simulations of cranes moving at trainees’ command in accurately reproduced digital surroundings – is what simulator training is all about, but that’s not so. “I’d like to start by saying that we do not build simulators,” says Alizadeh. “What we build are workforce training systems. The simulator itself is just a component of what we do.”
Different tools for different goals One component is the hardware. It can range from a laptop with a gaming joystick, via VR goggles worn by the students to ‘surround’ themselves with the virtual reality world of the crane, through to multi-screen
20 | April 2026 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
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