Forecasting the impact of virtual environment technology on maintenance training

To assist NASA and the Air Force in determining how and when to invest in virtual environment (VE) technology for maintenance training, we identified possible roles for VE technology in such training, assessed its cost-effectiveness relative to existing technologies, and formulated recommendations for a research agenda that would address instructional and system development issues involved in fielding a VE training system. In the first phase of the study, we surveyed VE developers to forecast capabilities, maturity, and estimated costs for VE component technologies. We then identified maintenance tasks and their training costs through interviews with maintenance technicians, instructors, and training developers. Ten candidate tasks were selected from two classes of maintenance tasks (seven aircraft maintenance and three space maintenance) using five criteria developed to identify types of tasks most likely to benefit from VE training. Three tasks were used as specific cases for cost-benefit analysis. In formulating research recommendations, we considered three aspects of feasibility: technological considerations, cost-effectiveness, and anticipated R&D efforts. In this paper, we describe the major findings in each of these areas and suggest research efforts that we believe will help achieve the goal of a cost-effective VE maintenance training system by the next decade

Global wealth disparities drive adherence to COVID-safe pathways in head and neck cancer surgery

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Session Participants

draft copy of this article was sent to all members of the Roundtable for their input regarding any revisions, changes, additions, and editing purposes. The article presented here represents the integration of input received from all participants of the Roundtable, and forms the final product of this Special Session. The Roundtable contributors, i.e. managers, engineers, industrial consultants, and researchers, are listed in alphabetical order