Credit: Company-X
A gamified beef scribing training app developed by Hamilton-based Company-X for Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC) will be showcased at conferences across Australia.
The technology, built by Company-X senior software developer Jiadong Chen, was developed after the Australian specialist research and development provider for meat processors invited the software specialist to participate in a multi-tender process.
“AMPC set a bit of a challenge to develop a gaming angle towards a common industry problem,” said AMPC program manager (advanced manufacturing) Stuart Shaw.
“We struggle with attracting technical people in our industry to develop technologies that make processing better. There's a need to keep continually training people.”
“We used beef scribing because it was easy to explain, and we could see potential uses for it.”
Beef scribing, or rib cutting, done correctly, is profitable for the meat processor.
“If you don't get those cuts right, then you lose money from that point on,” Shaw said.
Company-X proposed a proof of concept for a web-based gamified beef-scribing training solution.
Gamification works to motivate users' behaviour with elements that are familiar from typical gaming scenarios and environments, such as offering challenges and earning rewards.
With a mouse on a desktop computer or a pen on a tablet computer, users draw on a digital photograph of a side of beef to show where they think the cuts should go, engaging trainees through interactivity.
Users are timed per carcass, with the time allotted to them diminishing as they progress through the levels.
Users are scored on accuracy, and their score is recorded on a leader board for all to see.
“When developing this web-based gamified beef-scribing training solution for AMPC, we used the Unity game engine,” said Chen, who is also a Microsoft ‘Most Valuable Professional’.
“At the same time, we adopted Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store user data and host this Unity web app and deployed all services in the Microsoft Azure cloud’s Australia East data centre in NSW, which reduces network latency while meeting data sovereignty requirements.
The beef scribing solution was a hit with the AMPC and its members, and there are plans to showcase it at conferences across Australia.
“The game was very engaging. It nailed it perfectly. We were very impressed with what Company-X put out there. We've got a really good engagement tool,” Shaw said.
“As far as creating training tools through this type of technology goes, we are only touching the surface of what we can do using different combinations of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) and so forth.”
Company-X has also recently provided technical due diligence for Āhau, a genealogical database and social media platform for Māori communities, and Māori-owned open banking gateway BlinkPay.
