United Parcel Service of America Inc. today announced a plan to start using virtual reality to train employees to spot road hazards.

The package delivery company’s new VR classroom program will be launched in September at the company’s nine UPS Integrad training facilities.

With the rise of convenient e-commerce and retailer delivery promotions, the number of packages moving on city streets continues to grow rapidly. In 2016, UPS delivered more than 19 million packages and documents per day across the world. During holidays, such as the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, huge increases in delivery volumes are predicted, potentially reaching 700 million packages during that stretch alone.

The result is that UPS delivery drivers are clocking more time on the road in congested traffic conditions and a variety of interesting weather conditions. That puts more pressure to improve the safety of drivers out on those roads and a need to find a way to train new drivers under safe conditions. Traditionally, drivers would train with touchscreens and 2-D monitors to learn about road hazards, then drive on closed courses and eventually graduate to driving in the field. With the use of VR, the field can be brought to the students.

“Virtual reality offers a big technological leap in the realm of driver safety training,” said Juan Perez, UPS’s chief information and engineering officer. “VR creates a hyper-realistic streetscape that will dazzle even the youngest of our drivers whose previous exposure to the technology was through video games.”

The VR training modules would replace the computer-screen training portions that currently use touchscreens to teach about detecting and safely navigating road hazards.

The training setup for VR initially looks a little bit strange. Students sit in a chair in front of a computer screen with a plastic, video-game steering wheel apparatus and pedals on the floor. Then they don a VR headset, such as the HTC Vive. That display immerses students in the lesson by putting them directly into the driver’s seat of virtual UPS trucks, which respond and move in their own virtual world similar to actual trucks.

As a result, instructors can run simulations of what sorts of hazards could happen on the road without needing to put students onto the road itself. In a simulation, a truck driver could get a sense of how the road looks from the driver’s seat, what is visible and how objects such as other vehicles and pedestrians may not be visible when turning, stopping or adjusting truck position.

UPS Integrad classrooms seek to teach new UPS employees all of the fundamentals of the delivery chain from driving to door service. Employees even practice driving trucks in a replica outdoor city, complete with real streets and sidewalks and simulated delivery and pickup sites.

Jeanne Lawrence, UPS’s Integrad expansion director, said the training is foundational to the new employee experience. “VR complements real-world training in a way that deeply engages our employees,” she said.

The VR training regimen is currently directed at UPS delivery truck drivers. However, the company added that it is exploring the use of augmented reality – the use of images projected onto the field of view – for training tractor trailer drivers and performing other duties necessary to operations.

Photo: UPS