Practising real-life situations in a virtual training environment

For several years, the Navy has been developing a comprehensive capability to produce virtual exercises to train soldiers with better skills. This time, the Navy is piloting a procedure exercise for the virtual training environment for trainees to practise situations involving damages on a vessel in a setting that simulates reality.

This five-month project was conducted with Kajaani University of Applied Sciences as a student project of seven participants .  

The realisation of the virtual environment was aimed at creating an operating environment that would be as realistic as possible. The trainees serve on a vessel practising a damage control situation involving leaks and the use of damage control tools, including wedges and a motor pump.  The quantity of the water leaking into the vessel and the water level in the sea have been accounted for. Several leaks occur and in the spaces of the vessel which are underneath the sea water level, there are objects floating. 

The trainees are engaged in a multiplayer game, which also improves their cooperation and communication skills, because fluent cooperation is primordial in a real situation, too.  At the end, the trainees receive a report on how they did based on which the instructor can give them feedback. 

- The project is a part of a larger entity in the framework of which the Defence Forces and security authorities cooperate with educational establishments to produce virtual training material for security authorities. The final products will be extensively available to different actors in the security sector, the Chief of Development for Navy Learning Environments, Lieutenant Commander Pasi Leskinen says. 

The project has been highly rewarding for both parties.

- When engaged in the simulation exercise, the students got to fulfil their ambitions and do something that at best could save lives and equipment. I hope that in the future as well, we will find common ground and make a contribution to Finnish know-how in simulation learning and development of Finland’s defence, says Matti Sarén, Rector of Kajaani University of Applied Sciences.

The training environment development started with the Navy contacting the University of Applied Sciences. The students recruited for carrying out the project visited the Navy to familiarise themselves with the leak simulator, damage control tools and vessel to get to know the operating environment.

The project conducted in this short period of time was rewarding but challenging.  For example, the students were tasked with solving how the movements of water and operating the tools could be replicated in the virtual world as if they were real. 

In the Navy and a few Army brigade-level units, piloting of VR technologies will start this spring.