Design and Evaluation of a VR Training Simulation for Pump Maintenance

Through technological advancements more and more companies consider virtual reality (VR) for training of their workforce, in particular for situations that occur rarely, are dangerous, expensive, or very difficult to recreate in the real world. This creates the need for understanding the potentials and limitations of VR training and establish best practices. In pursuit of this, we have developed a VR Training simulation for a use case at Grundfos, in which apprentices learn a sequential maintenance task. We evaluated this simulation in a user study with 36 participants, comparing it to two traditional forms of training (Pairwise Training and Video Training). This case study describes the developed virtual training scenario and discusses design considerations for such VR simulations. The results of our evaluation support that, while VR Training is effective in teaching the procedure for a maintenance task, traditional approaches with hands-on experience still lead to a significantly better outcome.