Outlook

Training simulators are fundamental for training in areas, such as firefighting, aviation, medicine, and the military ¹, ², ³, ⁴, ⁵, ⁶. While many new applications such as VR headsets emerge in the human machine interface areas, most of them primarily land in the game and entertainment world. Now only a few applications for manufacturing processes are used in industrial practice. However these VR/AR new solutions are getting more popular in vocational education. Training simulators offer new possibilities to improve the quality of vocational education and training, especially in technical subjects. There numerous studies researches and meta-analyses of other researches on the questions like:

• How immersive methods can really improve learning?
• Which areas of vocational education can immersive solutions can help the most?
• What are the benefits of using immersive technologies?
• What are the barriers and fallbacks?

Popularity of professions now

According to a 2021 study ⁷ the popularity of training simulators are uneven among the manufacturing professes. The researchers filtered and reviewed and analyzed all relevant and high quality publications on training simulation methods. The literature they examined focus on specific processes or specific technologies, such as AR, VR, and haptic technologies.

The research applied the classification structure of manufacturing containing six main groups. These are primary shaping, forming, separating, joining, coating and finishing, and change of material properties. The research shows that a larger number of publications are limited to a small number of processes.

Popularity based on economical features

The processes with more than five publications in descending order are assembly (53), cutting with a geometrically defined edge (45), welding (34), disassembly (27), and coating from the liquid state (18). They say the decision for simulation-based training is made by technical directors and production managers that are not interested in the chosen simulation model but want to increase production and quality, reduce energy consumption and in general aim to achieve an economic benefit. The figure shows the uneven distribution of literature.

We discuss other benefits in Benefits of Digital Reality part of the handbook and devote a chapter for potential fallbacks in Obstacles in the organization part.

Other important areas

There are very growing interest towards woodwork, forestry, construction and transportation too. In these vocational areas vendors offer promising solutions based on similar benefits. Avoiding health risks, material consumptions and training efficiency are the keywords.

References

¹D. A. Cook, R. Hatala, R. Brydges, B. Zendejas, J. H. Szostek, A. T. Wang, and S. J. Hamstra, Technology-enhanced simulation for health professions education: A systematic review and meta-analysis, JAMA 306 (2011), no. 9, 978–988.

² S. Larnpotang, D. Lizdas, D. Rajon, I. Luria, N. Gravenstein, Y. Bisht, W. Schwab, W. Friedman, F. Bova, and A. Robinson, Mixed simulators: Augmented physical simulators with virtual underlays, Virtual Reality (VR) Conference 2013, 2013, pp. 7–10.

³ F. Lateef, Simulation-based learning: Just like the real thing, J. Emerg. Trauma Shock. 3 (2010), no. 4, 348–352.

⁴ B. Sohmer, C. Hudson, J. Hudson, G. D. Posner, and V. Naik, Transesophageal echocardiography simulation is an effective tool in teaching psychomotor skills to novice echocardiographers, Can. J. Anaesth. 61 (2014), no. 3, 235–241.

⁵ E. Farmer, J. Van Rooij, J. Riemersma, P. Jorna, and J. Moraal, Handbook of simulator-based training, Ashgate, Farnham, Burlington, 1999.

⁶ J. Sullivan, J. H. Yang, M. Day, and Q. Kennedy, Training simulation for helicopter navigation by characterizing visual scan patterns, Aviat. Space Environ. Med. 82 (2011), no. 9, 871–878.

⁷ B. Knoke, K. D. Thoben, Training simulators for manufacturing processes: Literature review and systematisation of applicability factors, Computer Applications in Engineering Education 2020. jan