Design and Evaluation of a VR Training Simulation for Pump Maintenance Based on a Use Case at Grundfos

Encouraged by 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. Thereby the need arises for understanding the potentials and limitations of VR training and establishing 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 paper describes the developed virtual training scenario and discusses design considerations for such VR simulations. Further, it presents the results of our evaluation, which support that VR Training is effective in teaching the procedure of a maintenance task. However, according to our evidence, traditional approaches with hands-on experience still lead to a significantly better outcome.