Aussie VR education tool launched in US 

A virtual reality tool designed by a University of Adelaide academic with local agriculture tech company Think Digital, launched to the United States at the 97th Future Farmers of America convention in Indianapolis in late October. 

The origins of the convention stretch back to 1925, when several teachers at Virginia Tech organised the Future Farmers of Virginia for young men in agriculture classes. The FFV then served as the model for the Future Farmers of America, which this year saw more than 70,000 agriculture-focused educators and students at the event.

The Australian VR tool, called CattleVR, was designed by Mandi Carr, from the university’s School of Animal and Veterinary Science, to provide experience to the high number of students with limited large-animal experience entering the University’s animal-based degrees.

“We were finding students were fearful of cattle, leading them to behave unsafely around them in the yards,” Carr said.

“Due to the size of the animals, and the potential for injury to the students and the stress to the cattle when they’re handled incorrectly, I knew there was an opportunity to improve training.”

Think Digital is an Adelaide-based extended reality (XR) studio with a focus on solving problems in agriculture using XR and AI. 

“This immersive virtual reality tool allows students to put on a headset and learn first-hand about the size of the animals, the flight zones, and how to move them safely through the yards,” Think Digital CEO Kat Bidstrup said.

“CattleVR is a fantastic complementary tool for educators that bridges the knowledge gap for new students, and, most importantly, we know for sure that no student has been injured being kicked by a virtual cow.”

Mandi Carr’s insight and experience was crucial to ensure CattleVR was accurate and appropriate for use in classrooms. She says the result gives students the insights they need to feel more comfortable handling large animals, with more than a thousand University of Adelaide students having already been through the CattleVR training program.

“Kat and her team developed a large amount of responsiveness within the experience so that students get the full experience of the size, and the different responses animals have, depending on where to stand and how you move,” Carr said.

JULIA GARDINER

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