Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Training of Procedural Tasks Through the Use
of Virtual Reality and Direct Aids
Jorge Rodríguez
1
, Teresa Gutiérrez
2
, Emilio J. Sánchez
1
,
Sara Casado
2
and Iker Aguinaga
1
1
CEIT, Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Técnicas de Gipuzkoa
2
Tecnalia
Spain
1. Introduction
A high percentage of the human activities are based on
procedural tasks
, for example cooking
a cake, driving a car, fixing a machine, etc. Reading an instruction topic, watching a video or
listening the explanation from an expert have been the
traditional methods
to learn procedural
tasks. But, most researchers agree that procedural tasks are learnt gradually as a result of
practice through repeating exposures to the task.
Nowadays,
Virtual Reality (VR) technologies
canbeusedtoimprovethelearningofaprocedural
task and moreover to evaluate the performance of the trainee. For example, a Virtual
Environment (VE) can allow the trainees to interact physically with the virtual scenario,
integrating a haptic device with the computer vision system, so that trainees can interact and
manipulate the virtual objects, feeling the collisions among them and, the most important,
they can practice the task under the approach of
learning by doing
. In this way, trainees can
practice in order to improve their abilities until they are proficient with the task.
This chapter introduces a
new Multimodal Training System (MTS)
that provides a
new
interactive tool
for assisting the trainees during the
learning of a procedural task
in the
assembly and disassembly operations. This MTS uses the haptic feedback to simulate the
real behaviour of the task and special visual aids to provide information and help trainees to
undertake the task.
One of the main advantages of this platform is that trainees can learn
and practice different procedural tasks without the necessity of having physical access to
real tools, components and machines
. For example, trainees can assemble/disassemble the
different components from a virtual machine as it would be done in the real life. This system
was designed and implemented as an activity in the context of the SKILLS project
1
.
During the
learning of a task
,mostofthetimes,
trainees need to receive aids with information
about how to proceed
with the task. From the point of view of the authors, these aids can be
divided into two groups according to the type of information that they provide and how this
information is provided:
direct aids and indirect aids
.
The difference between both types
of aids is in the cognitive load requested by the trainees to interpret and understand the
information provided by the aid. In this way,
indirect aids
require that trainees are active in
1
IST FP6 ICT-IP-035005-2006
