Innoarea Projects participated yesterday in a conference under the slogan ‘Industrial R-Evolution: Emerging Technologies: What’s to come?’ organized by the Valencian Metallurgical Business Federation (FEMEVAL).

FEMEVAL is a non-profit business organization that represents the metal sector SMEs in the Valencian Community. Every year this entity organizes multiple events and activities for the associated companies and, on this occasion, we were invited to participate in a round table.

At the beginning of the event, different organizations and entities collaborating with FEMEVAL, specifically, the Union of Mutual Insurance Companies, AIDIMME, VALMETAL, UNIMAT PREVENCIÓN and FEVAMA presented the project they have jointly promoted, which they have named Prevention and Challenges 4.0. During their presentation, they talked about issues related to emerging technologies, especially cybersecurity, occupational health and safety as well as the labor market that currently exists. The representatives of these organizations were able to convince the attendees that even though industries are in a continuous change, the digital transformation must be focused on achieving an increasingly safe, productive and humane Industry 4.0 model.

After the presentation of the event, the organizers gave way to a round table in which Alfonso Soriano (CEO of Innoarea Projects) shared the stage with Marta Jiménez (VALMETAL), Raquel Arriaga (UNIMAT PREVENCIÓN), Javier Murcia (UNIÓN DE MUTUAS), Borja Coronado (CFC Cobots), Lorena Jordá (AIDIMME) and Carlos de la Cruz (Beiota).

The round table was the ideal space for discussion on the challenges and opportunities of some of the emerging technologies, namely: Industrial Exoskeletons, IoT, Collaborative Robotics, Industrial Robotics and Additive Manufacturing.

Our CEO, briefly presented Innoarea Projects and, after that, talked about the Virtual Reality project that we have developed in collaboration with AIDIMME and Vielca for Depuración de Aguas del Mediterráneo (DAM). As he mentioned, it is a training system in Virtual Reality whose objective is that the plant operators are trained and learn to correctly develop the tasks to be performed in their work environment following the action protocol.

Alfonso Soriano, mentioned very promising data regarding Virtual Reality. As reflected in numerous studies, he commented that VR training is a trend that more and more companies are implementing because it is being seen to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of processes.

For example, at the latest Oculus Connect event powered by Facebook, which took place in San Francisco on September 25 and 26, research was presented showing that professionals who train with VR manual tasks are able to complete them in reality in 56% of the time it takes those who do so without having been previously prepared through VR trainings.

In addition, he explained that our Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality solutions are having a great reception in the industry, although it is true that it is the larger companies that are betting more on its use: “We are also focused on bringing them closer and making them affordable to companies of virtually any size”.

Therefore, he pointed out that at Innoarea we are developing standard tools that can be applied to a large number of companies and thus reduce the cost considerably, as is the case of remote assistance with Augmented Reality and distance training with Virtual Reality.

Alfonso Soriano then highlighted the main advantages and applications of training through Virtual Reality as well as the challenges faced by this immersive technology in today’s business landscape.

After the round table, a showroom was set up in which we presented our solutions. In our case, we prepared some interactive demonstrations of Virtual Reality training, including the DAM project mentioned above. In this way, the attendees were able to experience first-hand the use of innovative Virtual Reality technology.

The event concluded with a small lunch and some very interesting conversations about Extended Realities, technology, cybersecurity and Industry 4.0.

We would like to end this article with some reflections made by the CEO of our company about extended realities:

“According to our experience and taking into account the short life of these technologies as we know them today, this technology is here to stay. They are systems that are implemented in companies and are gradually enriched with new content and functionalities over time. The market forecasts of all analysts on the growth of the use of these technologies in the industry are huge“.