Development of Virtual Robot Assisted Learning (VRAL) in Robotic Course Using Virtual Environment Technique

Virtual Reality (VR), the recent development in the fields of user interface design and interactive computer graphics, offers significant advantages to classical methods of teaching and learning. A series of VR based educational modules are being developed to explore the capabilities. This research aims to offer an alternative resource for those students who did not fully grasp the material in class or from the text by utilizing VR technology. Its main objective is to provide these students with another viewpoint that will give them a better understanding to the material that was previously presented through traditional means. The best way to learn robotics is that each persons control his/her own robot. But the cost of providing a robot for each student is too expensive. With the virtual robot system, students can have hands-on experience virtually. In this research, a virtual robot prototype was developed to assist robotics course teaching. It was then evaluated by the students from Mechanical Engineering Diploma, Politeknik Sultan Abdul Halim Muzaffar Syah (POLIMAS) students to get initial insights of the prototype benefits and limitations. The features being tested were: interaction, believability, ergonomics, freedom to explore, safety, learning and robotics. The result shows that the prototype has a potential in assisting robotics learning as the students agreed to the benefits that the prototype could offer