Augmented Virtuality for maintenance training simulation under various stress conditions

Available research activities reveal that Mixed Reality can play a major role in psychotherapy for the treatment of anxiety states and stress situations. Current Virtual Reality approaches mainly used to train assembly processes or maintenance tasks, but haptic feedback is not considered. This however may be a problem especially for training of hand movements. In this paper, the authors describe an Augmented Virtuality approach, by integrating real operating elements in a virtual environment for Head-mounted displays. As a result, it is possible to separate the visual and haptic perception completely. The high degree of immersion allows the simulation of various stress conditions while training maintenance tasks. This prototype implementation forms the basis for a subsequent study to examine the impact of the proposed stress scenarios, like sudden failure of the light source or steam emission at the values, during the execution of a maintenance task.