Creating the technologies that help the cause of energy conservation, health and safety and clean energy serve as a boost to the sector and the nation’s economy. Countering the facet of global warming through high quality chip manufacturing by reducing the carbon footprint of the process, Santoku Corporation has aced the industry standards. The company produces finest quality chip carrier tapes that carry extremely small parts which are indispensable for promoting lightness and miniaturization.
The newest challenge for the team at Santoku was to establish a business considering using VR as a means of communication by 3D interaction. VR is perceived as a visual means. And as its use progresses, the company is exploring its range while thinking about a mechanism that creates methods and safety ideas that enhance the safety of people and the earth using VR.
Let’s dive straight into the ideas that go behind the lifesaving tech here:
VR put to Constructive Use
Consider VR as a means of visual expression and its costeffectiveness. Santoku Corporation is exploring the infinite possibilities of VR and gradually increasing the number of sensory reproductions so that it perceives it more intuitively. The company wants to contribute to society by providing disaster reproduction case study videos and disaster experience system products for improving danger sensitivity. It is an operational concept of comprehensive safety to operate these and maintain safety. The complete safety circulation cycle is scientifically guided according to human experience and biological characteristics. It is a training program that enhances safety at each stage of the human experience process. While exploring social needs for VR, the theme that fully fit the company was “safety and reassurance that directly touches the human heart according to the biological characteristics of humans,” and it aims to realize it.
The VR experience system applies robot technology to reproduce the sense of touch, smell, and balance. It is a mechanism that creates a scary sensation and improves danger sensitivity by directly stimulating the five senses of a person. From the beginning of development, the team has implemented a mechanism to adjust the stimulus intensity at the time of experiencing touch by the use of various methods. That creates a mechanism to prevent posttraumatic reactions.
Negative emotions in humans are guided by a mechanism that adds negative sensations to the body. The company has studied the biological process of human beings while grasping the human experiences from the biological science side and comprehensively understanding sense engineering, neural engineering, brain chemistry, and psychology. The method of elucidating the safety and reassurance of human beings rather than the biological mechanism of human beings is a unique approach, which is the essential idea of RiMM.
Working Of RiMM
The company’s signature technology: RiMM makes the body memorize work:
At first, there is a skill training simulator that emphasizes versatility and expandability. Secondly, the KY video is a case study of occupational accidents, is an accident reproduction video that has been expressed using original deformation technology since 2005 and an intuitive method.
Then comes the disaster experience product that senses the danger in the event of a disaster and improves the sensitivity. In addition, a few years after the introduction of disaster experience products, the company plans to commercialize and announce products that promote awareness of the disaster which occurred in 2018.
The Need
Since 2020, there has been an increase in demand from the market. The company has taken new actions in consideration of comprehensive support for safety. It has reviewed human safety from the biological science side, establishing safety methods for each process that humans experience, and has started conceptual research on an integrated safety integrated circulation cycle that provides the services. The simulator for promoting judgment and behavior in the event of a disaster will commercialize the method the company developed in the 2015 Disaster Imagination Game training simulation, which further enhances resilience in the event of a disaster. The company is continuously developing products and methods that realize “flexible strength and ability to recover” with the theme of resilience.
The Concept
A comprehensive safety cycle is a concept created through 20 years of research and development. The RiMM safety comprehensive circulation cycle is improving with time, and the company has developed methods corresponding to the circulation cycle. It has also developed strategies to improve disaster response capabilities by increasing resilience in the event of a disaster. It also prioritizes a mechanism to move the safety complete circulation cycle that contributes to human safety.
The Time Factor
Santoku has created specifications and developed products according to the needs of the market. It has used the products developed at an early stage in the market, collected feedback opinions on improvements, performed improvement work, put them back on the market, and repeated this cycle to raise the product level gradually. This method is called the cyclone Philosophy, which is a development method created to obtain consensus in a brief time in developing a technical training simulator created with full custom specifications. With this method, the company can meet the market’s demands faster. The company has studied the challenges and incorporated it for safety and reassurance.
“Safety cannot solve latest problems unless it is a fusion of multiple disciplines.” The company has made it possible to use the specialized knowledge necessary for safety by immediately incorporating it through continuous trial and errors. The vast technologies and expertise which the company uses are VR, robot control, vision processing, mechatronics, automated feedback control, sensitivities, psychology, brain chemistry, neural engineering, safety engineering and reliability engineering.
The Wide-Ranging Disaster Responses
The global environment surrounding people has changed these days drastically. The disasters the world is facing can be divided into four categories. They are general, natural, occupational, and human disasters. In addition, the number of cases including unknown disasters is increasing. To increase resilience in the event of a disaster, it is necessary to face and respond to unknown disasters. To deal with such disasters comprehensively, the cooperation of government agencies, research institutes, and various people is required. To realize a safe society, it is necessary to have a cooperative system that solves problems while cooperating with the whole society and facing disasters.
Since unpredictable disasters occur for the first time, it is difficult to objectively understand the cause of the disaster and what is happening. In addition, new obstacles affect people’s psychological aspects, which is unmanageable at times. It is important to stabilize the psychological aspects so that this type of situation does not occur.
To avoid psychological instability, it is necessary to switch between unknown and known concepts while at the same time using human intuition to avoid crises. Intuition facilitates judgment and reduces the risk of life being compromised. Intuition is one way to overcome obstacles. By repeating these activities, humans can improve their ability to overcome unknown obstacles. Rather than being able to do nothing, intuition makes the decisions and takes immediate action to increase the chances of survival.
Inspired by the Origins, Spreading it to the World
A culture that emphasizes safety and reassurance is one of the cultures that grew up in Japan’s harsh social environment. In this harsh environment, Santoku has been conducting research and development in accordance with various safety requirements for more than 20 years. Regarding new demands. It is solving the problems by repeating good trial and error in joint research with research institutes. Safety and reassurance to realize society for people. At the same time, it is also important for people to respond while reconsidering the global environment in which they live. People need to work together to deal with various disasters. Realize a safe and secure society. Cooperation and wisdom are the key points to ensuring safety, including the global environment in which people live.
The company is currently developing product sales in Asia, its origin from this year, to create a product demonstration environment in the United States and start sales activities. At the same time, it plans to start expanding services to India and the Middle East.
A Happy User Experience
Here are the voices of RiMM users who put their views forward, “There are disaster cases that lack the ability to feel danger in a wide range of age groups. It is difficult to cultivate this “power to feel danger” only by conventional classroom education, and I was wondering if there was any innovative idea, but the variety of disaster scenarios is overwhelming, and I feel it. We chose “RiMM” because it was a decisive factor to convey more realism by using the equipment together. A total of two hundred employees experienced disaster scenarios in about one year after the introduction, and in the questionnaire after the experience, about 90% of the experienced people answered that there was a change in safety awareness. By experiencing danger in VR, it became possible to imagine fear and danger scenes, and many people requested regular experiences to maintain safety awareness and risk prediction training. I feel that the safety awareness of our employees has further increased.”
