Virtual Training for a Manual Assembly Task

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment, conducted to investigate the benfits of force feedback for virtual reality training of a real task. Three groups of subjects received different levels of training before completing a manual task, the construction of a LEGO biplane model. One group trained on a Virtual Building Block (VBB) simulation whcih emulated the real task in a virtual environment, including haptic feedback. A second group also trained on the VBB system, but without the benefit of force feedback. The last group received no virtual assembly training. Completion times were compared for these different groups in building the actual biplane model in the real world. ANOVA analysis showed a signficant change in performance due to training level.