Keeping Workers Safe Using VR Training with Mousa Yassin from Pixaera

DISCLAIMER: Below is an AI generated transcript. There could be a few typos but it should be at least 90% accurate. Watch video or listen to the podcast for the full experience!

Mousa Yassin 0:00
Because the amount of information you collect about people is just something we haven’t had before, you know, and many people are going to are going to like dive deep into that space eventually when you have enough users using VR, but you know, unlike your phone, which collects a lot of information about you, in VR, you’re just collecting so much personal information, just just the way your head moves, is a unique print of who you are, you know, you’re collecting every single degree of movement.

Alexander Ferguson 0:31
Welcome to UpTech Report. This is our applied tech series UpTech Report is sponsored by TeraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of video at teraleap.io. Today, I’m very excited to be joined by my guest, Mousa Yassin, who’s based in London, United Kingdom. He’s the founder and CEO at Pixaera. Welcome, Mousa, good to have you on. Thank you, Alex. Thanks for having me. Pixaera is an immersive learnings, learning simulation platform, our focus for the workplace. So I think you’re you’re working with enterprise clients in the energy and manufacturing sectors work on the likes of BP and ge. Now pyxera helped me understand like the the root problem that you set out to solve what did you see in the space? You’re like, hey, immersive simulations? We’re talking about VR, and but also computers? Why? What did you see the problem?

Mousa Yassin 1:20
Okay, so I think I think we can break it into different stages. But the problem was we’re solving today specifically is, if you look at the safety industry, what not people know about the safety industry is that it’s like 56 $56 billion market, right? Every single person, and they call them goods producing sectors, like construction, manufacturing, energy, of food, safety, has to take mandatory trainings yearly. And they’re currently provided through lectures, PowerPoint, video. And then when you look at the data behind it, you have around 2.9 million deaths that happen every year, which is a pretty crazy number, a 370 million incidents, around $3 trillion of incident related bosses for companies. So what we went after knowing the value of simulated learning, and how effective it is for training, focusing so much on that vertical, to provide companies with an alternative that is more affordable, and orders of magnitude more effective for their employees in a way that in ways that are scalable, as the first problem we’re focusing on on solving. And to be even more specific, we’re working on something called the life saving rules, and we’re just doing a single product right now that has nine different modules. In a way, that’s just better than anything out there to also hurt a more affordable price point for companies where it’s a no brainer. For us to make that transition.

Alexander Ferguson 2:49
You saw the giant industry of safety training and the need for billions of dollars that the industry exists, and the problem that that that existing solution is mediocre, it may or may not work that well, or there’s there’s room for improvement in bringing in immersive solutions, immersive training. Do you don’t have a background in VR and AR stuff? Tell me how did you get into this? liqtech Take me back you actually worked at at BP correct?

Mousa Yassin 3:21
Yeah, that’s true. Um, so yeah, I mean, the interesting thing here is, I’ve always been a gamer have always been very, very passionate about gaming. And when I started working, I actually started my career in consulting, when anyone would ask me, where did you learn a lot of what you learned before getting into the, into the real world, it was through playing World of Warcraft, you know, and that always stuck with me because because within a game, I’m working with many different people from all over the world, all different age groups, we’re solving problems together, we had to communicate problems. So if there’s like a monetary system and economy that we have to learn how to get better out, we had a guild we had to like learn how to manage people around like different skills and so so that always stuck with me, I think if you’re a very good gamer, and someone who’s been gaming a lot by like, it’s, it’s natural for you to be able to design games, at least get into designing games. So that’s one of them.

Alexander Ferguson 4:21
You make it sound like gamers should put their their game history on their resume their CV when they are applying for jobs.

Mousa Yassin 4:29
I honestly think I actually I actually believe that, like I look at I look at parents now to tell their kids don’t play games or don’t play so much fortnight. And I always push against that just that the future of the world is going to be in the virtual realm whether we like it or not, that’s something I believe in personally and in the worlds can go in many different directions. But yeah, if you a few games a lot, I think that would give you a bit of an advantage in the future.

Alexander Ferguson 4:56
Interesting. I already appreciate that. That that perspective. So you come from the background, you pulling your your your are already growing up being able to understand games or that that training from there, and you bring that forward to business issues.

Mousa Yassin 5:11
Yeah, so so the the the problem for me was I was like, Okay, if I’m going to spend all my life working on something, what is a problem that’s worth worth worth my time, you know, worth dedicating all my life towards. And where I always learned is education, right? I always think if I can dedicate my time to improve education to the people who needed the most, so people in rural areas around the world or poorer countries, that would be an amazing place that would make me feel fulfilled. And when I started learning more about VR and AR and where that’s going, seeing a future where anyone would be wearing a very affordable cheap pair of glasses, and accessing highly sophisticated and effective games that are way more effective than anything that exists around the world. Now, it would level the playing ground, you know, because with with 5g, the whole story with fast internet being accessible to everyone. And hardware, just getting to a place where it’s extremely cheap. That fits so nicely. And but but for me, too, but the reason we focus on safety is because there’s just a long way to go before you can start tackling that educational problem, in my opinion. And I understand the industry. So well, I worked in BP, as you said, safety is like a critical problem right now, like someone gets hurt on site. It’s a massive deal and the budgets exists. So it’s a place where you can really solve a problem today, generate revenue, build a team and build the tech around it.

Alexander Ferguson 6:41
You’re a supply chain is like playing a role in supply chain at BP. What did you see there when it comes to like training and safety concerns that start to make some of the wheels turn in your head?

Mousa Yassin 6:53
Yes. So I started off with implementing a system they had called Maximo. And I implemented it for the supply chain team. And then they hired me as a consultant, they took me in full time. And I was I was put out an awkward task to like set up contracts for local Iraqi contractors, I was working on a project in Iraq, and two months into the contracts being deployed. And I was excited for managing the contracts and turned an 18 year old kid walks under a pipe and the pipe fell on him for an unsafe procedure, and he passed away. So I was like I was still 23 at the time. And the GM at the time asked me as the contract manager to take all the all the contractors we had with birth flowline contractors and retrain them all, like get the right company to retrain them off. So I experienced quite a bit of what safety training looks like. And it’s just very sad as a good way to put this to say like people just walk into a room like an assembly line. The guy just walks in through a bunch of bullet points, signs this passport for them, and they walked out. So that was kind of the first shock and seeing the amount of money we spent at the time, which was close to $6 million per year to train these people. I was like, this has to change, you know, but the connection between gaming and that where hardware was and where everything was just just you know, the dots didn’t connect to the time.

Alexander Ferguson 8:21
It was like this around 2012 2016 you’re playing a role at BP. Yeah. Okay, and what was the next step from there? I feel like you also had something else going on with geeks. You What was that?

Mousa Yassin 8:35
Yeah, so in 2014 Actually, I left BP on the basis that I wanted to move away start something on my on my own. I started with a friend called fat he and you know, it started off as an IT let’s call it like device repair a scalable device repair service. And different things that I didn’t know at the time is like, understanding the market size. Thinking about scalability, understanding unit economics was something I wasn’t really aware of, you know, I just wanted to get into the startup world and an Uber was hard and anything on demand was high on the business ended up pivoting towards being an IT support SAS play that my co founder kept moving with. And as the whole b2c side, settled down, that’s where I was like, Okay, now what do I What do I do next? You know, and having learned what I learned about the importance of culture, the importance of, of thinking about market size, building a very strong foundation within a team. I took those and kept digging into the next problem I wanted to solve and that’s how, yeah, that’s how Pixar kicked off.

Alexander Ferguson 9:40
Growing up and living most of your life in in Dubai. starting a business is it easy, is it pretty simple? What’s that process look like?

Mousa Yassin 9:52
Honestly, it’s never it’s never simple. I think I think when you start a business, everything all the odds are against you. Especially in Dubai, I mean 2014 in Dubai. There were barely any investors. You don’t have them like tech Titans isn’t that readily available? remote work wasn’t wasn’t a thing at the time. But I mean, even looking at today, when you start a business, no matter how much experience you have clients, like if you look at all the different factors, like licensing entities, at least in the region, like, yeah, the costs are high. Now it’s much easier. Like today, it’s much easier to set up a company, but then banks give you a hard time to set up an account for you, because they don’t know if they can trust you with maintaining a p&l and maintaining funds. companies won’t sign anything with you, because you’re small, they don’t know if they can trust you. investors need to see evidence that you can prove your concept. They need to see that you have traction. employees don’t want to work with you, because they don’t really believe this is going to go anywhere. So like all the odds are against you. When you start a business. You just have to know how to play the game to figure out what what the right steps are. And yeah, I don’t think it’s ever easy. Honestly, if you’re a few fine. Like if you’re a founder, you always appreciate every other founder out there

Alexander Ferguson 11:03
is you know what, what they go through being able to start pyxera What was that? What was that journey? Like? Were you able to was a pretty easy to find some investors that saw your vision?

Mousa Yassin 11:16
Yeah, honestly, it just took it took the right steps at least much better than the first time around. But the way I did it this time was kicked off with doing as much as I can myself. So I funded the business initially with the with initial capital. I just traveled around I went all over Europe, looking, going to meetups learning about the gaming industry game development. And I thought of that the question I asked myself is how can I just prove the concept, see if clients are willing to pay money for this by spending the least amount of money possible. And then, when we started getting interest from clients, that’s when I started putting everything together, you know, first look for look for very strong, few very strong people that I trust that I know can plug in very well into the business that are like really strong individuals started off talking to them, recruiting them. And then yeah, building a very strong story and raising a pre seed round. So just getting people around me and I’m lucky, I’m fortunate enough to have people around me that believe in me that we’re able to put the initial capital in. And then yeah, post out after you have that initial capital just becomes a game of showing that you can deliver a year a team that can execute and showing the market showing, like seeing showing that clients are that excited about your product and are signing contracts with you. becomes the driver of growth.

Alexander Ferguson 12:39
Working with enterprise is its own unique space, for sure. versus going with small business or others. I feel like with your probably your geek study, he was that was more small business and consumer. Right.

Mousa Yassin 12:51
Yeah, I mean, enterprise businesses as a high risk. I mean, if you talk to an investor about going after large enterprises, they’re probably just run away. Because I mean, I can, I can only imagine how many companies thought they’re going to sell to large businesses and failed because they put all their eggs in that basket. So So yeah, it’s it’s a very risky game. They’re very sophisticated. They’re like security procedures that you have to get through all but once you’re in and you do a good job, like you’re in, you know, like, they have the budgets, they have the money, and it just gives you a very strong foundational layer. And when you’re working with safety, unfortunately, and unfortunately, you just have to play the game the right way, when you’re working with safety. It’s very difficult to start from the bottom. All right. You can’t like the small companies aren’t the ones who are going to dictate the standard, you know, the large companies are going to dictate the standard, and they’re going to enforce it to all their contractors, and then everyone under follows suit.

Alexander Ferguson 13:47
Where you immediately from the onset thinking, virtual reality when you thought of training.

Mousa Yassin 13:54
Yeah, so so that was kind of the first pivot, you can say that we did at the beginning, it was like VR, only, you know, we went and we built simulation and VR. And we’re very proud about the way we built it honestly, till now, the feedback we get from our clients is module standout big time, because they’re very intuitive. They’re very user focused. But what happened when COVID hit so like that, what I would tell you as a client is I will tell you, set up a training facility, buy a bunch of headsets, buy five headsets and start cycling people that you know, and looking back now, that just sounds very, very, like a crazy suggestion to give companies as soon again, we’re learning we’re learning as a company, you know, we’re learning like what what are some mutations? How are they effective? How, why are people actually retaining information when they take training through a simulation? So when we when COVID hit, suddenly we were like, all the contracts that were just going to come was suddenly like, on you know, companies were like, sorry, guys. COVID we can put people in physical locations. We can’t put headsets on people’s faces, it’s it’s a risk. So it made us look into the PC version of the product. We’re like, why aren’t we trying to see how PC would work. And when we started doing tests were the same simulations we built. And we built them in a way that’s so intuitive initially in VR, so that people can get through them very easily. So it made it easy for us to transition to PC, suddenly, the conversation started moving again. And the retention rates were surprisingly nearly the same. You know, like, when it comes to people understanding and retaining, we started understanding that the elements of of learning that a simulation brings are, by themselves orders of magnitude more effective than like watching a video or reading text or PowerPoint, but like VR brings an extra layer. So like, if it’s a spectrum, like video and videos, here, text is here, PC is here. And VR is just Of course, real life as number one, when you do it physically, and you feel the pressure and, and you’re there, but but the PC still gets you very close to to the top, four different elements that I can share, if you’re interested.

Alexander Ferguson 16:12
That whole like when you started the discussion here, you saw the industry, and you then experience in supply chain, being able to do that training, that just sending people through, watch the video, sign off, alright, you’re good to go. You’re trying to increase that, by whatever order of magnitude is possible. You’re saying PC, interactive experience is a degree higher than just watching a video. And then VR is even even further. Do you call PC, you say PC, but like, obviously playing some simulation a game on your computer? Do you call that immersive?

Mousa Yassin 16:54
Yeah, of course, we do. I mean, if you if you define immersive, it’s where the person is, is, is immersed in the game, you know, the person feels like they’re part of the game, and they’re influenced, influencing the outcome. So they’re making decisions, they’re a core character of that experience. They’re not a separate entity that is just being pushed information. To You know, it’s not like information is being thrown at you, your main part of that story, you know, and your, your decisions influence things around you. And you can kill people if you make a mistake, or you can save them if you make the right decision. And yeah, they’re they’re all the elements related to story, like you’re associated with a story, you have to keep thinking and you can’t, it’s so interesting, because you just can’t disengage, you know, if you if you disengage, you suddenly have to make a decision. And you’re like, Oh, my God, what happened? Like you have to constantly and you know, you’re being trapped, you know, your data is being recorded. So you’re, you’re there, you know, you’re in it. And yeah,

Alexander Ferguson 18:00
all that is there, I find interesting, you haven’t used the word gamification, because that’s, that’s been a big term, and a lot of people have used but you use words like simulation and interactive and immersive. Do you not see it as gamification? Or is that not a term that you resonate with? Yeah,

Mousa Yassin 18:18
I mean, I mean, gamification is an amazing term to use. I mean, the way that we would define gamification is making like building things within an experience that gets people to have fun, and to be more engaged within the experience. A simulation, on the other hand, is putting you in a real life situation, you know, like putting you in a real life scenario, where instead of you playing a game to learn chemistry, or learn math, or to learn a certain specific thing, you’re actually there, and we’re like, Alex, today, you need to do 123 figure it out, you know, that suddenly puts you in a position where you have to critically think, through your actions. You know, that’s, that’s a very important, like, different. When many people try our simulations, they go like, Well, wait, I wasn’t taught this before I was put in the simulation. And that’s kind of that’s kind of a very important point. You know, you’re the fact that you’re not put in front of a classroom with information being dumped out, you forces you to critically think, you know, if you’re, if you’re asked to think critically, you’ll probably come up with the right decisions. Because a lot of them are logical, as long as you’ve learned how to break things down and by you have been forced to be like, okay, but what the hell is this and let me try to break it down and understand that you’re suddenly learning so much more, you know, and at the end of it after you consume all that data, we just put you in a game, to just go through an interactive mode of like, going through everything you learned, you know, and that’s where we find the best retention understanding.

Alexander Ferguson 19:56
I’ve often heard that when you learn in case When you intake information, it may not retain it unless you write it down or you do a presentation on it or you, you write an article or something, and then it helps make sure it stays. But you’re saying, actually bypass that and just jump in there in the middle of it. And instead of trying to give you the information, you’re having to critically think and learn it in play. And that actually helps you retain the information right there.

Mousa Yassin 20:21
Yeah, of course, I mean, what you mentioned as well, as an amazing thing, if you’re able to explain something and like interact with it yourself or debate it with someone, that’s that’s a very effective way of learning. But yeah, when you’re putting people through awareness and educational content, getting them to like just taking them throwing them into it, just brings them out, even feeling that feeling a bit. I’d say like that they’d be feeling confident and excited about the new things that they now know, to discuss with their friends as well, you know, because suddenly, you’re like, wow, okay, I did this myself, versus, you know, it’s all other approach to learning,

Alexander Ferguson 21:00
getting this adoption of a really a whole new way of safety training. What are the roadblocks, what what’s preventing from from mass adoption?

Mousa Yassin 21:11
Yeah, so if we’re focused on safety, I think in general, in this space, we’re very, very early. Okay, so so I like to keep separating what we’re doing, like what I’m telling you about now, like simulation development, and VR are two separate things. Something that I don’t like so much right now is like, I would love to be working on VR VR, you know, but I have to like today, we have to work on simulation. So what VR is some a definition I’d like to bring up when I think about VR. So so people think VR is like pair of glasses that you put on your face. And that’s virtual reality. But the scientific definition of VR is inducing targeted behavior, like using artificial sensory stimulation to the organism, with the organism having little or no awareness of the interference. So you’re basically giving the person realistic data to their senses, that mimics real life to the point that it confuses the subconscious mind, right. And we’re getting really good at the visual aspect of it, which is the revolution VR headsets that are like brought in, and we’re getting really good at sound. But like, we still have a long way to go, right? Like your brain is receiving a lot of information from the real world. And you’re going in, and you’re basically bypassing the real world inputs into the senses, you know, so there’s just so much you can do in that space. And there’s just a lot that’s going to happen. But, yeah,

Alexander Ferguson 22:46
is it just the hardware that needs to catch up and and people just to start to be able to adopt it further before? mass adoption?

Mousa Yassin 22:54
Yeah, I mean, I mean, so many interesting things are gonna happen when you think of virtual reality as a definition, I mean, machine brain interfaces is a massive, massive thing within it, right? It’s, it’s literally taking the person to a whole other reality. Right? So machine brain interfaces are going to be the biggest revolution in that space. And in my opinion, because you’re suddenly going to be able to be like to live through, like other dimensions of reality, directly from your brain, you know, like, without, instead of talking, you’re communicating directly. And everyone has very unique, very unique neural network. And it’s going to be like, how do you teach the machine brain interface? Things that react to your way of thinking to interact with our digital world? You know, I’m not so tough.

Alexander Ferguson 23:40
I read about, of course, Elon Musk has his thing going on. And then this steams, valves. Owners is working on their thing. So they’re working on those brain interfaces, and Facebook, too. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, of course, Facebook, they’ve, they’ve been growing that. But you are trying to be able to say that you don’t have to wait for brain interfaces to get the value of simulations and virtual reality.

Mousa Yassin 24:07
Yeah, I think when you look at training now, I mean, there’s so much that’s going to happen in the world, right? When you look at training today. If you take people and throw them in very sophisticated, VR experiences, I think you’re making mistake because they’re going to like they’re going to struggle to get through it. You’re just putting them in the deep end, most people are not that tech savvy. So you just have to take the right steps. The first step that I believe people need to take now is just look for really important trainings, that moderate to so many people and just build them in ways that are so intuitive, and way more effective. I think, if we just do that to the point where simulations become accepted in companies and every company has a few VR headsets, then that’s kind of a good first step and it’s a natural step that will likely have to take place, but then hardware improvements will keep coming in over And then the percentage of VR headsets versus PCs will keep increasing, you know, people will end up having more and more VR headsets until eventually, a lot of the training is happening on your VR headsets, how the world’s going to look like at that time? We can we can, there are so many different paths that could take place. But I think I don’t think beyond just people understanding the technology. I don’t think there are that many roadblocks. There’s companies are just starting to learn about it. You know, they’re they’re just confused. Where do I start? What do I do? does this actually work is very expensive. What we try to tell people is like, just get an off the shelf product, don’t pay a lot of money, just pay a couple of $1,000. Get yourself a headset, get in there and hear your employees feedback. And then and then like, figure it out slowly. But yeah, there’s just a lot of confusion and fear, which is natural when something new comes in. But yeah, I think I think naturally a few years, every company will have a VR content library.

Alexander Ferguson 26:04
It’s almost looking, okay, what is on the consumer level people are used to at this moment and make sure you’re, you’re you’re keeping up to date on the training side for that people are used to interfaces as far as PC wise. But VR, or VR headsets are definitely becoming more and more common everywhere. Like, my HTC Vive, right there and my quest over there. So I love VR. But for you, I mean, it’s obviously it’s that’s where you want to go. Right, I feel like that drive that within you internally, and it’s just you’re trying to find the pathway to get there. Is that is that what, right, right?

Mousa Yassin 26:37
Yeah, yeah, so there’s a, there’s quite a bit of noise in the market where you have certain companies that are building, you know, like, I don’t want to call them gimmicky, but they’re building just service oriented, bespoke modules, where you come in as a company, you say, here’s a bit of money, create this for me, give me the product, and I’ll go away. And there’s a lot of that, and usually end up with things that aren’t that sophisticated. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like, content, people, people able to, because content is something that’s considered very easy, and everyone does content. And there’s a lot of it, you know, I see that as a problem today, because many companies have VR simulations, but they’re complicated, they’re not effective. They’re not sophisticated enough, they’re not intuitive enough. And then you have companies that say, we want to be a platform, you know, like, we’re a platform, there’s going to be a lot of content, just everyone has a lot of content, and let’s put it on the platform. And I, I’m just not a fan of these two approaches, because today, you need very effective. Think of games, right? Like, you have steam and steam took a long time to become steam. And then you have like World of Warcraft, right? World of Warcraft is not just a piece of content, it has an economy, it has like really sophisticated systems, it has really strong social aspects to it, you know, and, and, like, even if we keep labeling content content being built so effectively, and so well, is always the first step to adoption, you know, so so there’s

Alexander Ferguson 28:16
that issue in the space that we’re right now is that people are just creating content, but not really thinking of the the full life cycles that if we give another example, people that aren’t familiar as much with games, think of Apple devices, I suppose Apple spends a lot of time on really defining and streamline the experience of like, Oh, it’s just it works for you Stewart should versus some random piece of foam. That’s somewhere like I don’t know, will this work or not? You try to apply the same concept to the simulations and trainings where people aren’t really thinking through the entire experience?

Mousa Yassin 28:48
Yes, so the path we took about the path we believe in is just pick a vertical that has a very large user base, you know, it could be in the medical field, it could be like a specific procedure, just do it really, really well, you know, because because really well, is usually very, very expensive. For one single organization, it requires a lot of iteration. And you need to keep on pulling data, adding more systems, adding AI interactions NPCs to react to the person’s behavior and actions, and charge people. The goal is to achieve mass adoption, you need to be able to build something that can scale globally and replace existing methods, you know, so that’s where PC was a huge leap for us and then browser as another huge leap for us. It’s everyone needs to be able to access these

Alexander Ferguson 29:41
and are you watching on browser now as well that they don’t even need to have a download program?

Mousa Yassin 29:48
Yeah, so so that’s something we actually do play with, for for people, certain companies and certain use cases. It’s the future for us, but but we think it’s coming very soon, like just streaming. Technology is not that effective in most of the world, you still have, like bad latency. And with latency you’re gonna get like, yeah, it just kills latency kills and experience if you’re playing a game. But by accessibility, you’re creating content that actually replaces existing methods is a huge place to start, you know, and then from there, you either go tackle other verticals and do them really, really well, that has massive markets, just like Blizzard for example creates for the foreground creates something else, or you then think of what a platform would look like, I’m not a huge, I don’t connect so much with the platform path, I see that like, something that’s going to revolutionize education is not going to be a platform that has so many educational content, it will probably be the next world of warcraft game that allows people to, like get lost in the world and specialize to level up but they’re learning at the same time with their friends, you know, I believe, like a fortnight game, a massive sophisticated game is what’s going to change the world. Not a lot of like weak content pieces that people get into and get out of,

Alexander Ferguson 31:09
you know. And that’s where your focus specifically on safety training, starting with the vertical energy manufacturing sector, so just creating a very high end, quality simulation experience that is applicable to every energy manufacturing company.

Mousa Yassin 31:28
Yeah, exactly. And very modular, where they can change things easily within it. very sophisticated reporting mechanisms very scalable is the path we’re taking where anyone anywhere can plug in, play it and learn more than anything that’s there. And you can, on the other hand, see their data. And know that there competent enough to get into your field or your your operation.

Alexander Ferguson 31:55
Taking a moment is to get a little bit in some of the technical details of the way you’re building it, or you’re using Unreal Engine as your base.

Mousa Yassin 32:04
Yeah, so most most of our work is through Unreal Engine.

Alexander Ferguson 32:08
And then from there, he would mention a few is how you do the interactions. When it comes to AI. Everyone loves talking about AI as as a buzzword, but having a much more interactive experience, being able to whether it’s a dialogue or responding to your, what you’re doing, how are you focusing on building a, an interactive AI type of experience in these simulations?

Mousa Yassin 32:29
You know, honestly, I think the merge of AI and simulated simulations in general is going to be a massive, massive step. There’s just so much that can be done because of the amount of data you’re you’re collecting from the user. Right? So where where I think you would add the most value things we look at is understanding your current state of learning, like, Are you someone who’s advanced, medium low, based on the interactions you’re taking, and then the environment reacting to your current state as an amazing first step, right? So you’re collecting enough data about Alex. And based on Alex kind of reaction times. decisions to that position, having the NPCs react differently to NPCs, move in different different ways, do different things, to match your current skill set and helps you grow as you need to grow, you know, within a within a training simulation. But yeah, there are so many other elements that are interesting to look out when when it comes to when it comes to AI. But the thing that I connect with the most here is just behavioral analysis, you know, machine learning to understand human behavior. Because the amount of information you collect about people is just something we haven’t had before, you know, and many people are going to are going to, like dive deep into that space eventually, when you have enough users using VR. But you know, unlike your phone, which collects a lot of information about you, in VR, you’re just collecting so much personal information, just just the way your head moves, is a unique print of who you are, you know, you’re collecting every single degree of movement, you know, so So, your your, your, your eye movements, you’re kind of the speed you’re making decisions, you’re how you engage with people and how you interact. And obviously, it’s going to be used for good and it’s going to be used for bad eventually because there’ll be you’ll know exactly when you need to hit Alex with with an ad. And when they’re likely to press the buy button, which will be very interesting to see the future.

Alexander Ferguson 34:33
But being I can imagine when it comes to safety training that among a bunch of data that comes in let’s let’s compare that with what you remember. And still maybe the training that exists of funnel people into a classroom watch this video you right, all right, you watch the video, you’re good to go. Now people are in a VR experience. You’re able to track how how engaged they are, how much they’re paying attention and then the score that you write or The stamp of approval is is much more factual based truly what they are retaining Yes.

Mousa Yassin 35:06
Yeah. And with with, there’s so many more layers, like you have videos of certain things they did that you give back. So once you finish the training, you get a good summary of how you perform. So you’re learning yourself, it’s like Alex, you missed this situation, you should have noticed that this guy was going to get that was doing something wrong here. Here are the screenshots, and here are the videos if you want to watch them. And then your manager is getting a breakdown that is at a higher level, right? Like most of the employees you have, that have Alex’s experience, are not considering 123, which usually could lead to an incident at your site. So it’s giving you kind of information that you can use to improve things physically in physical areas, put different signage like change things, and it’s helping you understand your workforce to be able to spend more time with them on certain things versus Yeah, before the amount of information you had about anyone was so so minimal, right? It’s like these multiple choice questions out of the 20, the person got four incorrect ones,

Alexander Ferguson 36:09
and that the quantity of data is only increasing but then the need to understand what does that data look like, which then connects that more of a platform SAS solution along with just not just the simulation by itself? So what can you share? Just your roadmap? What are you excited about? If we just look forward from here? And what what can you share?

Mousa Yassin 36:28
Yeah, so so several things, honestly, I mean, right now we’re, we’re super excited about streaming, like that’s a, that’s a massive one, being able to push the products to everyone, anywhere around the world is a big thing that we’re super excited about. Where we’ve come, we’ve nailed it for the remote workforce. And that’s been super fun to see. And we’re going to continue we’re going to continue with that. So that’s, that’s really cool. Something that we’re toying with a little bit is there’s going to be an intersection between the virtual space and the augmented reality space. And eventually you’re I think he’ll stop using AR and VR as keywords, it’ll just be extended, but you’re collecting so much information about the people so seeing how we can use that information for the industry as a whole you know, because safety is not a technical skill that company excellence it’s it’s a horizontal thing that everyone cares about. It’s about people’s lives it’s it’s more important than then people feeling like they need to keep it confidential but the monitor information and collecting from so many different people around the industry allows you to improve the safety quality for like a massive space that has 6 million plus people that rely on it. So yeah, I would say over the next couple of years we’re just super passionate about this vertical we want to do it so well really nail it and prove that we are works to transform and simulations work to transform safety and then and then think of the next vertical we’re excited to start thinking about the next vertical to play with

Alexander Ferguson 38:04
the The future is bright on so many levels. those that want to learn more about Pixaera you can go to pixaera.com Pixaera and be able to explore and get it looks like requested demo. Thank you so much, Mousa for your time and taking us through this this journey that you’ve been on. Anytime. Thanks for having me, Alex. And we’ll see you all on the next episode of UpTech Report. Have you seen a company using AI machine learning or other technology to transform the way we live work and do business? Go to UpTech report.com and let us know