Nintendo games have made the Wii controller a satisfyingly realistic controller for pretend tennis, golf and baseball. But how about using it to practice doing surgery, applying pesticides or operating a nuclear power plant?
Real-world simulations like these are perfectly suited to Nintendo's Wiimote, says MIT research fellow David E. Stone. In fact, he claims the motion-sensitive controller is "one of the most significant technology breakthroughs in the history of computer science." Say what?
For Stone, the Wiimote is the key to building realistic training simulators within the virtual world of Second Life. He is helping companies and universities do that through his WorldWired consultancy. Clients include a company interested in training workers for its power plants, a manufacturer of medical devices and pest-control firm Orkin.
Orkin, for example, has hired Stone's firm to create training simulations, which might involve inspecting a house for moisture and heat sources or mixing chemicals and loading them onto a truck.
"This isn't the kind of technology, or model, that this industry – or Orkin – is used to considering," notes David Lamb, Orkin's vice president of learning and media services. He's working with senior officers in the company to build a business case for such training, and, given the potential savings the company could eventually realize across its 400 branch offices, "there's a very high probability we'll move into this arena."
One of the attractions of Stone's approach is the low cost. In Second Life, it's relatively easy to build chairs, buildings and other objects for avatars to sit on or walk through. Tools like wrenches or manual controls are also easy to build and, with a little tweaking, users can control them with a Wiimote.
"This may be one of the most significant things about Second Life," says Stone. "It is a world of abundance. People share. What would the real world be like if your house and car and all your furniture, et cetera, was available for free or for pennies?"
Real-world training and certification will always be necessary, Lamb notes, but – especially in the early stages of training – real savings could be seen through a virtual online environment.
As for the Wiimote, Lamb says, there are "a lot of different pieces of equipment that (trainees) need to use. Those things that are hands-on, that require picking something up and manipulating it, then I think the Wiimote is a good tool for that."
Orkin isn't alone. Among Stone's other clients are a medical-devices firm and a global-energy company focused on power-plant training – both looking to reduce training costs. Prospective additional clients include a private research foundation looking into driver safety and a consortium of European universities interested in a virtual cancer lab.
Representing something as delicate as surgery is a tad more challenging than building inspection. But Stone believes Second Life is potentially up to the task and suggests the software interface might be dynamically adjusted so even the smallest movements can be displayed, perhaps by zooming in to a full-screen grid. And he notes that Second Life worlds can incorporate video, which could help in cases where the graphics are simply too crude to simulate something effectively.
He's not the first to consider using the Wiimote as a virtual scalpel: A video game for the Wii called Trauma Center: Second Opinion is a primitive example of how the Wiimote might be used in medical training.
The success of virtual training programs, of course, depends on how good the training scenario is. The Wiimote, for all its ingenuity, is just an input device. "It does not help the user learn anything," says Michael Goodman, a research director at the Yankee Group. "It is the software that serves this function. The Wiimote might make it a little more intuitive, but that's it."
Then again, in the corporate-training industry, "a little more intuitive" might go a long way.
"The training world in particular has been struggling to find effective mediums to deliver training via technology that engages the user," says Paul Terlemezian, president of iFive Alliances, a consulting firm in Atlanta. "How do we get people to embrace it? How do we get people to practice what we've trained them on?"
The advantage of the Wiimote is that it's a "human-centric device," says Eric Klopfer, a professor at MIT. A gyroscopic mouse, by contrast, "maps well onto the computer's interface, but not to the person's. The Wiimote fits the user. … People know intuitively what to do with it when they pick it up because we use it like devices we are familiar with – bats, rackets, wands, etc."
Stone has delivered a driving simulation using the Wiimote snapped into a plastic steering wheel accessory for a major logistics company.
Using products like Google Maps and Google Earth, Stone's simulation can represent actual streets on-screen, so that not every trainee in America has to drive down the "same mythical Maple Street," Stone says. "We would include those intersections and locations where there is a history of accidents."
Such explorations are likely just the beginning. More specialized virtual worlds and input devices are likely to crop up in the future, independent of Second Life or the Wiimote.
The point, says Stone, is that "the ability to easily integrate a wide range of psychomotor activities with simulations running on standard computer platforms will change the ways people interact with computers."
And, just maybe, help people learn how to do a better job in the real world too.
