'Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)'
Doi
Abstract
The use of virtual reality (VR) for industrial training
helps minimize risks and costs by allowing more frequent and
varied use of experiential learning activities, leading to active and
improved learning. However, creating VR training experiences
is costly and time-consuming, requiring software development
experts. Additionally, current authoring tools lack integration with
existing data and are desktop-oriented, which detach the pedagogic
process of creating the immersive experience from experiencing it
in a situated context. In this article, we present a novel interactive
approach for immersive authoring of VR-based experiential
training by the trainers themselves, from inside the virtual
environment and without the support of development experts. The
design includes identifying interactable elements, such as 3-D
models, equipment, tools, settings, and environment. The trainer
also specifies by demonstration the actions to be performed by
trainees, as a virtual choreography. During course execution,
trainees’ activities are also registered as virtual choreographies and
matched to those specified by the trainer. Thus, trainer and trainee
are culturally situated within their area semantics and social
discourse, rather than adopting concepts of the VR system for the
learning content. We conducted a usability case study with
professionals from an international wind energy company, using
detailed models of wind turbines and real-world procedures.
Trainers set up a training course using the immersive authoring
tool, and trainees executed the course. The learning experience and
usability were analyzed, and the training was certified by
comparing real-world task completion between a user who had
undergone virtual training and a user who did not.Manuscript received 25 June 2021; revised 30 November 2021 and 18 February 2022; accepted 2 March 2022. Date of publication 7 March 2022; date of current version 21 October 2022. This work was supported in part by the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, in part by the Portuguese National Innovation Agency (ANI) under Project POCI-01-0247-FEDER038524, and in part by Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under Project UIDB/50014/2020. An earlier version of this paper was presented in part at the 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D UserInterfaces[DOI: 10.1109/VRW52623.2021.00199].(Corresponding author:
Fernando Cassola.) Fernando Cassola, Daniel Mendes, and Ant onio Coelho are with the INESC
TEC, and Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Manuel Pinto and Hugo Paredes are with the INESC TEC and University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]).
Leonel Morgado is with the INESC TEC and Universidade Aberta, 1250-100 Lisboa, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]).
Sara Costa, Luıs Anjos, David Marques, Filipe Rosa, Ana Maia, and Helga Tavares are with the Vestas Wind Systems, 2670-327 Loures, Portugal (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TLT.2022.3157065info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio