A Concept for Virtual Reality Based Industrial Maintenance Training Preparation

This paper presents ongoing research about the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to facilitate training for industrial maintenance. The objective is the help industry training personnel for maintenance operations at the distance without being obliged to make trainers and training objects travel. Despite the availability of increasingly many and mature VR devices, it is still difficult to achieve the level of realism needed for the effective training of particular manipulation gestures that are vital for specific assembly and disassembly procedures. We propose a systematic concept for a process in a VR-based experimentation environment that facilitates the selection, calibration, and evaluation of different VR devices for the training of specific maintenance operations. We present a concrete implementation of this process for demonstrating the feasibility of our concept. Via virtual hands, users can interact directly with virtual objects via various devices (mouse, keyboard and Leap Motion). Maintenance gestures can be executed as naturally as possible and recorded for facilitating the preparation of work instructions and training sessions.