“Immersive and Interactive Procedure Training Simulator for High Risk Power Line Maintenance” by Borba, Cabral, Montes, Belloc and Knorich-Zuffo

This project shows a procedure-training simulator targeted at the operation and maintenance of overland distribution power lines. This simulator is focused on workplace safety and risk assessment of common daily operations such as fuse replacement and power cut activities. The training system is implemented using VR goggles (Oculus Rift) and a mixture of a real scenario matched perfectly with its Virtual Reality counterpart. The real scenario is composed of a real “basket” and a stick – both of the equipment is the actual ones used in daily training. Both, equipment are tracked by high precision infrared cameras system (OptiTrack) providing a high degree of immersion and realism. In addition to tracking the scenario, the user is completely tracked: heads, shoulders, arms and hands are tracked. This tracking allows a perfect simulation of the participant’s movements in the Virtual World. This allows precise evaluation of movements as well as ergonomics. The virtual scenario was carefully designed to accurately reproduce in a coherent way all relevant spatial, architectonic and natural features typical of the urban environment, reflecting the variety of challenges that real cities might impose on the activity. The system consists of two modules: the first module being Instructor Interface, which will help create and control different challenging scenarios and follow the student’s reactions and behavior; and the second module is the simulator itself, which will be presented to the student through VR goggles. The training session can also be viewed on a projected screen by other students, enabling learning through observation of mistakes and successes of their peers, such as a martial arts dojo. The simulator features various risk scenarios such as: different climates – sun, rain and wind; different lighting conditions – day, night and artificial; different types of electrical structures; transformer fire and explosion; short-circuit and electric arc; defective equipment; many obstacles – trees, cars, windows, swarm of bees, etc.

1. G. Chen, Z. Gan, J. Sheng, X. Lu, “Equipment Simulation Training System Based on Virtual Reality”, International Conference on Computer and Electrical Engineering, Dec., 2008 
2. B. Arendarski, W. Termath, P. Mecking, “Maintenance of Complex Machines in Electric Power Systems Using Virtual Reality Techniques”, Conference Record of the IEEE Symposium on Electrical Insulation, 2008
3. D. M. Oliveira, S. C. Cao, X. F. Hermida, F. M. Rodriguez, “Virtual Reality System for Industrial Training”, International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, 2007
4. E. Blümel, G. Müller, W. Salem, M. Schenk, “Technology enhanced training at workplace: A virtual reality based training system for the technical domain”, International Conference on E-Business and E-Learning, 2005.