Meet the Master 

Engaged in the development of machine control and vision technology for semiconductor die and wire bonders for 13 years at an electric company. He transferred in 2001 to start a new business. He developed a counterterrorism / decommissioning simulator for nuclear power plants. Commercialized a VR disaster experience system for improving sensitivity that incorporates a tactile unit.

 

Santoku Corporation has been recognized as one of the 20 Innovative Companies to Watch of 2021.

We mainly provide products as a trading company that procures, processes, and sells materials. The information equipment business, which started as a new business, provides technical services for research institutes based on VR about b20 years. We are currently selling our own VR product RiMM (Risk Management Multiple Method).

Below are the highlights of the interview with Susumu Matsuda, the Director of SANTOKU CORPORATION.

 

What are the methods that RiMM uses to provide safety?

Ensuring safety based on disaster information Discuss ways to improve safety and find safety methods. However, these methods are mainly classroom education. Therefore, many students cannot concentrate on education and lacking awareness of danger and causing a disaster. To take safety education seriously, it is necessary to convey the fear of disasters and raise awareness of danger through disaster experiences using VR.

Can you provide some introduction to RiMM skill training?

RiMM Skill Training  is a training program that allows you to memorize your skills. Skill training consists of three simulator programs. 

What is importance of RiMM safety education?

Safety cannot be ensured just by experiencing a disaster with VR. The most important point to ensure safety is 3-step education. First, we will case-study possible disasters in the workplace, then you can experience the disasters in VR and raise your awareness of danger, and finally you will learn how to protect yourself from disasters. We provide services and comprehensive product offerings, including educational consulting.

 

Why RiMM awareness 360VR program is special?

The RiMM uses the platform that is the hardware in common at each stage. By selecting the software that suits your purpose and operating it on the platform, you can improve the efficiency of hardware utilization. 360VR Advance is a unique product developed according to customer's request. In addition, customers collect opinions while using the product, and the feedback is used to improve the product and encourage it to continue to be used repeatedly. This philosophy is based on RiMM's Cyclone Philosophy.

What makes the RiMM disaster response stand out?

To share disasters that occur in society, we will convert disasters into a form that can be experienced in VR and build a database. By providing a disaster database in a form that can be used by everyone, we will share information and improve the safety of society. In addition, we will add new disasters and continue to improve while assessing the quality of the database to improve the quality of education and reduce unknown disasters by using it. The disaster database can reduce the damage caused by disasters.

How does your peripheral materials help your clients?

Various tactile units are prepared for the RiMM according to the disaster event. Touch, pain, force, balance sensation, etc. These units are devices that effectively convey the fear of a disaster. The RiMM reproduces the disaster phenomenon visually and audibly, and touch. This will give the experiencer a sense of danger, improve their sensitivity to danger, and allow them to concentrate on safety education.

What is special about your program metrics that can help customers successfully?  What services do you provide?

To ensure safety in social activities, we need a comprehensive response system. We will provide educational means to ensure safety at each stage according to the experience sequence experienced in the event of a disaster. We divide the human experience sequence into three stages and provide educational means for each stage. First, there is a training program for learning skills with the body, an educational program for forming intentions and raising awareness, and a responsiveness training program for improving resilience in the event of a disaster. In this way, we provide a means to comprehensively improve safety according to the customer's level.

Can you provide us some view about specialty if your Fastning parts?

Hardware is becoming a cost competition, making it extremely difficult to differentiate. Therefore, we are attention is focused on creating ideas. it is worthwhile to realize a means to directly feel emotions. Specifically, it affects people's emotions such as "feeling what is presented", "feeling fun", "changing feelings", "want to do", "want to avoid", etc. It is necessary to establish a means that focuses on things. You need an organization with the expertise to make them happen.

What is the most important key to your success? Share the experience.

Every time we develop a training simulator that meets customer demands and enhances skills, customers demand cost-effectiveness in development costs. Developing new features is inevitably costly. As a result, it has gradually become clear that it is possible to virtually experience and feel the dangerous state of life that is difficult to reproduce, so if it is possible, it will meet the demand and be cost-effective. However, to experience a dangerous event in virtual space, it was necessary to reproduce sensations other than vision, and to realize a tactile sensation that matched the dangerous event. It became a key technology to create various tactile sensations by finding that negative sensations are generated, and educational effects can be improved by increasing the number of tactile sensations reproduced at the same time by visual and auditory sensations.

What are the biggest challenges your company has faced in the initial years?

To develop software according to the customer's individual request with the simulator, it is necessary to make a prototype program so that the image can be shared. The big problem is that if the software is not completed, it cannot be confirmed whether the customer's requirements are met. If the customer's image and the image we create do not match, the customer's request cannot be met. This work is costly and reduces development efficiency. Therefore, we have adopted a mechanism to develop products while sharing images at an early stage by the Cyclone Philosophy.

What do you feel are the reasons behind your company’s reputation?

To maintain the safety of society, we must devote ourselves to safety and concentrate on providing means throughout society and build a safety idea based on our own philosophy to make it expandable. Also, face disasters and build a form that can record and reuse disasters. I think that the attitude of continuing to develop a mechanism to use the disaster database as a means of doing so in common in society is highly evaluated.

A Leader’s Vision for the future shared in his own words

Communication using the Internet is expanding rapidly, globalization is progressing, and society is changing rapidly. The global environment is changing rapidly with the changes in industry, and the environment surrounding people is also changing drastically. For people to live safely in their environment, they need the ability to respond appropriately to the obstacles caused by those changes. People need new ways to stay safe. Through RiMM, I would like to experience the disasters that have occurred in the world, share the information, gather people with high safety awareness, think about the mechanism to maintain safety with that wisdom, and further improve safety.

We aim to expand VR to realize safe and efficient information transmission. We will elucidate the mechanism that influences human biological emotions and realize a mechanism that efficiently and safely touches emotions by means of communication methods tailored to everyone. To realize these, we will find engineering technology and a mechanism to touch emotions through the sense organs and the brain from a medical point of view. Therefore, it is most important to combine the knowledge of medical and biology with the knowledge of engineering. VR will continue to evolve in a wide range of fields as a means of better communication, as an efficient means of education, and as a mechanism to care for people's feelings, to maintain human safety.