September 26th the team visited the KLM training and simulation department. It's here where all the simulators are situated and the cabin crew is trained on how to respond to different situations (called normal and abnormal situations) that can occur in and around an airplane. The main reason of our visit was to attend a door training. Twice every year the cabin crew has to come to the location to show that they're still able to open the airplane doors according to regulations. For every type of aircraft the KLM owns, a small portion of the plane around the door has been recreated. The trainer operates a computer that controls the way the door should handle and the different type of (ab)normal situations that should happen. The trainer can, for instance, set the outside conditions to misty or a fire breakout inside the airplane. Or technical malfunctions like the door handle not responding, powerassist not functioning or the slide not inflating after opening. These are all situations the cabin crew has to train for because all of these situations come with different procedures. During these trainings we had the oppurtunity to watch the cabin crew operate the doors in different stressful situations and learned that opening an airplane door is not just a matter of turning the handle and pushing open the door.
We learned that there are multiple handles that operate the way the escape slide inflates and how the door is released once it's locked. Aswell that the door has a powerassist option where the operator does not have to put as much force on the door as without. This is something that ignited a discussion within the team. How are we going to replicate this on our physical door? And how are we going to animate our virtual counterparts? The door consists of a lot of different moving parts. At the end we sat together with the product owners to have a small discussion about the whole day and what they expect to see in the end product. We came to the conclusion that we either should go for a full immersive experience were the focus lies on the stressful situations and how to respond to these. Or focus on creating a physical door that works together with the VR world so that the users create a form of muscle memory to operate the doors. We walked away with a notebook full of notes and useful knowledge. |