Rolling into the future
By MAS Team | 13 August 2020
In 2019, MAS sponsored Engineering New Zealand's Young Engineer of the Year award. We were stunned by the achievements of 29-year-old engineer and MAS Member Terry Miller, who won the award thanks to a little something called NOVA.
In the beginning..
It started, like so many things, with a beer.
Wellington engineers Terry Miller and George Heather-Smith were having a quiet pint and laughing about the saying that engineers are made to solve problems – and if they can't find any, they'll create their own.
"We weren't really thinking about a start-up, but were talking about how we wanted to build cool stuff and find an interesting project to pass the time," says Terry of that fateful drink in the winter of 2015.
But create a start-up they did – Eight360 (named after a pool table's black eight-ball). Their initial idea was to create a helicopter simulator, but after two years of refinements, the pair had engineered something slightly different: a fully untethered, world-first VR simulator that can rotate 360 degrees, giving users a "more realistic experience through rotation, acceleration and gravitational effects".
The creation of NOVA
Called NOVA, their prototype takes virtual reality to another level. "You can jump inside and have an experience that looks and feels like you're actually flying through space or tearing up a race track," Terry says.
Fast forward another two years and the pair have just signed their first deal, a project with the New Zealand Defence Force to explore ways in which Eight360's leading-edge technology can enhance training and simulation outcomes.
"It's the first time I've been paid in two and a half years," laughs Terry, who's been living at his parents' Petone house for five years with wife Olivia, who is expecting their first child in April.
"Start-ups keep you poor. But NOVA is something we really believe in, and it's pretty cool that slogging away in a series of leaky, abandoned buildings across the Wellington region has paid off."
It has paid off in other ways too. In November 2019, Terry was named the Young Engineer of the Year – an Engineering New Zealand award sponsored by MAS. He admits it was a surprise, but in his typically understated way, he's pleased to be recognised for "giving this VR thing a go".
This VR thing
"This VR thing" has a number of global applications, including for entertainment and local attractions, such as in shopping malls, cruise ships and VR arcades. "Or for tourist attractions such as at the top of the Skyline in Queenstown, where users can fly around the town in a virtual helicopter."
Another possible use for promotional and outreach purposes, for example, with aviation or car manufacturers, as well as for simulation and training. "So, for example, it could have applications in businesses such as flight schools, trucking firms and forestry operators. Truck drivers could use it to learn how to drive off-road, with forestry workers using it to learn how to operate expensive and dangerous forestry machinery in a safe but realistic environment."
International stardom
Because NOVA is compact and weighs under 500kg, it can be transported on the back of a truck to events or shipped overseas.
That's good news because, despite not doing any advertising, Eight360 has already had interest from as far afield as Hungary, Poland, India and the United States. "It's all been word of mouth or through our website and Facebook page. But the general response has been 'that's so cool, we've never seen anything like it', so we'll be looking to scale up to global sales this year."
A desire to "build cool stuff"
It's a long way from Reading in the south of England where Terry was born to Kiwi parents on their OE. They moved back to New Zealand when Terry was two, and he and his younger sister grew up in the Petone house he's still living in.
He was always fascinated with how things worked, pulling apart household items such as computers, stereos and mobile phones to better understand their internal workings. Later, that included buying broken iPods on TradeMe and 'Frankensteining' them into working units to resell.
"I wouldn't say I knew what I was doing, I was just slightly less hopeless at Googling things that other people."
A desire to "build cool stuff" led Terry to an engineering degree at Victoria University of Wellington and eventually to his first job in the R&D team at a horticulture equipment manufacturer in Tauranga. He followed that two years later with another R&D role in dairy automation systems in Wellington.
For a few years, Eight360 had to be fitted in around his day job, but in 2017, Terry went full-time, and NOVA segued from a novelty project into something more serious.
"Now we're excited to take this technology to the world and see where we can go with it."
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