Cutting-edge North East company brings gaming tech to global business

Exploring virtual worlds and bringing up visual information like ‘Iron Man’ – simply by swiping your hand - are now available to international businesses thanks to a North East company.

Spearhead Interactive, a spin-out company from Teesside University, founded with DigitalCity fellowship support, is taking virtual reality technology from the gaming world and translating it for business use world-wide.

The company, listed as one of the top 100 start-ups by startups.co.uk and Top 10 Tech Companies in Europe by Thinking Digital, has grown by more than 150% since it was set up nine months ago and brings its founders’ 15 years of experience in the field of virtual reality into business.

Dan Riley and Paul Li lead a team of five experts that create bespoke applications for everything from virtual reality training manuals for engineers to interactive 3D product design.

By employing gaming techniques, the company, based at Teesside University’s business incubator the Victoria Building, believes it can improve the effectiveness of learning by up to 70% and potentially bring millions of pounds worth of savings across the manufacturing, engineering, construction and healthcare sectors.

Spearhead Interactive, which recently won a UK Trade and Industry Exporting for Growth award, uses the latest in virtual reality technology including the ‘Oculus Rift’ VR headset and the ‘iMotion’. The technology uses tactile feedback technology to create real physical sensations when exploring a virtual world.

Founder Dan Riley explains: “Our technology means that if you want to train someone, for example to fix a pipe on an oil rig offshore, we can transport them into the virtual realm and even create the physical feeling of pulling a lever or pressing a button.

“We can give architects and builders the ability to walk around buildings and to remove walls, identify heating and plumbing systems, providing an unparalleled visualisation pre-build, a high quality reference during the build and, by linking in building systems and services, as a facilities management tool afterwards.

“By using visual recognition software, such as QR codes or image triggers, together with virtual reality techniques we’re got the ability to develop ‘Iron Man’ style visualisations of maps, machine manuals and so on - overlaying data onto reality.

“The key element of what we do is the fact that it all runs online - meaning instant, global access not just through our on-site and portable VR systems, but any web-browser or smart-phone and tablet devices. Additionally, we can connect hundreds of users together inside of these spaces, regardless of where they are in the world.

“The applications of the technology we use are virtually limitless and we are the only company world-wide that we’re aware of that is operating at this level in the commercial 3D sector, with the aim of bringing this fantastic tech to every business regardless of size.”

So far Spearhead Interactive has created 3D applications for iEvo, MPI Offshore, Trading Standards and is developing work for the Ministry of Defence.

Dan explains how the gaming component of their business training works.

He said: “You can put in place gaming techniques such as leaderboards – either to beat your own scores/times or that of other people - and other compelling elements.

“This transforms training from a potentially mundane task into an engaging and immersive experience and means people engage with the training at a much higher level and ultimately increase their knowledge.

“Some studies suggest introducing this into training can improve knowledge retention rates by as much as 75%.”

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