Developing virtual environments for industrial training

Virtual reality-based training systems (VRTSs) are advanced computer-assisted training systems using Virtual Reality (VR) technology. To have better structure and easier implementation, a virtual training system can be modeled as an integrated system consisting of a training task-planning module, an instruction module, a simulation module, a performance evaluation module, and an interface module. Presented in this paper are an architecture of VR-based training systems and a practical knowledge modeling approach to modeling the training scenarios of the systems by using Petri nets formalism. A Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling operations virtual training prototype system was developed to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved