An immersive environment for experiential training and remote control in hazardous industrial tasks

Inadequate training and lack of risk awareness are among the main causes of work-related accidents in manufacturing facilities and during hazardous tasks. In the last decade, Virtual Reality was introduced as an effective tool for improving individuals’ skills in their tasks in several different contexts by simulating operating scenarios. Nowadays, advances in interaction paradigms and novel devices create opportunities to further enhance training and work safety. In this paper, we introduce an immersive system based on affordable wearable devices for providing on-the-job training. In addition to its advantages for instructional purposes, we discuss the results of an experimental study about the performance of system as an assessment tool for evaluating the presence of incorrect movements that lead to work-related conditions.