Kiwi tech is going on an Aussie tour
The Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC) is planning to showcase gamified beef scribing technology built by Waikato software specialist Company-X at conferences across Australia.
Company-X senior software developer and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Jiadong Chen built gamified training for the Australian specialist research and development provider for meat processors. The corporation invited the software specialist to participate in a multi-tender process.
“AMPC set a bit of a challenge to develop a gaming angle towards a common industry problem,” said AMPC Program Manager (Advanced Manufacturing) Stuart Shaw.
“We struggle with attracting technical people in our industry to develop technologies that make processing better. There’s a need to keep continually training people.
“We used beef scribing because it was easy to explain, and we could see potential uses for it.”
Beef scribing, or rib cutting, done correctly, is profitable for the meat processor.
“If you don’t get those cuts right, then you lose money from that point on,” Shaw said.
Company-X proposed a proof of concept for a web-based gamified beef-scribing training solution.
Gamification is about motivating users’ behaviour with elements that are familiar from typical gaming scenarios and environments, such as offering challenges and earning rewards.
With a mouse on a desktop computer or a pen on a tablet computer, users draw on a digital photograph of a side of beef to show where they think the cuts should go. Those using pens were more accurate than those with mice, but the interactivity of both methods makes the education process engaging for trainees.
Users are timed per carcass, with the time allotted to them diminishing as they progress through the levels.
Users are scored on accuracy, and their score is recorded on a leader board for all users to see.
“When developing this web-based gamified beef-scribing training solution for AMPC, we used the Unity game engine,” said Chen.
“This can be used to create 3D and 2D games, as well as interactive simulations and other experiences. It also supports building games for more than 19 different platforms, including mobile, desktop, consoles, virtual reality, and web. At the same time, we adopted Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store user data and host this Unity web app and deployed all services in the Microsoft Azure cloud’s Australia East data centre in New South Wales, which reduces network latency while meeting data sovereignty requirements.”
The beef scribing solution was a hit with the AMPC and its members, and there are plans to showcase it at conferences across Australia.
“The game was very engaging. It nailed it perfectly. We were very impressed with what Company-X put out there. We got a really good engagement tool,” Shaw said.
“Working with Company-X was certainly a good experience, the way they nailed the brief for the project was fantastic.
“As far as creating training tools through this type of technology goes, we are only touching the surface of what we can do using different combinations of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) and so forth.”
“I was thrilled to hear AMPC loved the beef scribing web app and has plans to showcase it at conferences where it will be used as an engagement tool,” said Company-X AR and VR specialist Lance Bauerfeind.
“We look forward to working more closely with them.”