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Military Virtual Reality Technology to Become Corporate Team Training Tool

CAJES Virtual Reality Pod
CAJES Virtual Reality Pod

Originally published 13 June 2002


Two University of Warwick MBA graduates have formed a company that aims to take corporate staff training and team development far beyond outward bound courses and paint ball sessions. They have partnered up with a US company that makes virtual reality simulators for the US military, and they aim to retool that technology to produce a unique corporate team building experience.

The US company Helitrainer Inc produces special pods to train military helicopter pilots. The pods not only immerse the pilots in a virtual reality helicopter environment – they also physically move the pilots in 4 axes of direction. The pods can also be linked together so that they can interact in simulated land or air battles and missions.

The advantages of such a system to corporate team building exercise are two fold. Firstly it provides a new experience beyond the increasingly common team building exercises currently available. Secondly, and more importantly, companies can get a diagnostic data from each pod on the performance of each participant both as an individual and as a team player. Such quantifiable information should prove more useful than the more subjective analyses produced by the leaders of more conventional team building exercises.

The two Warwick graduates James Clare and John Senior, have formed a company “CAJES Business Solutions” to take up this business idea. They have made use of University of Warwick Enterprise Fellowship, and Mustard funding from Business Link, to develop the idea with Helitrainer Inc and produce a business plan as to how they can exploit the Helitrainer technology for corporate team training in Europe. A survey of 170 companies showed that 91% would be interested in exploiting this sort type of team training. They are now looking for £500,000 in venture capital to take the project further.

They CAJES team will be giving a presentation on their work at the Connect Midlands Springboard event on 18 June 2002 at the Centennial Centre in Birmingham.

For further details please contact:
The CAJES directors:

web site www.cajes.com