[[alternative]]A Virtual Environment for Electric Machinery Operation Training Using Expert System

[[abstract]]Electric machinery operation training is a key factor in training up electrical technicians successfully. How to build a fine training environment for training up electrical technicians is a crucial issue today. Traditional training environments are high-priced and time-consuming, and they are not easy to match the level and pace to the individual needs of every technician. Although new approaches to training have been created since the development of science and technology, there are still many unsolved problems within them. In our research, we applied expert system in a virtual environment for electric machinery operation training to provide highly intelligence, interaction and reality for global training environment. It could break through the limits of traditional training environment. Firstly, we built an interactive and realistic training environment using virtual reality technology. Next, we employed expert system to monitor the operations of trainee in virtual environment and to provide operation with explanation and demonstration fitly. Finally, we put training environment on the Internet for global training service. From economic viewpoint, our training environment can save a large number of expenses in equipments and trainers for training. From educational viewpoint, expert system plays the role of trainer. It provides explanation and demonstration for operation. Virtual reality allows trainee to be trained with security in a safe environment. Internet training service breaks through the limit of time and space, and therefore trainee can be trained anytime and anywhere. From technical viewpoint, our training environment combines expert system, virtual reality, database, client/server architecture, speech synthesis and speech recognition. Future works can refer to the manners of combination and communication of them. In future works, we will extend the range of training to power dispatch of power plant, simulate abnormal phenomena of electric machinery for trouble shooting, employ expert system to evaluate the training achievement of trainee, develop virtual environment with immersive virtual reality devices to improve the effects on training, adopt distributed virtual environment to provide team training service, improve speech engine to allow multi-trainee chating on Internet, and apply the manner of constructing training environment to other domains to enrich the contents of training.