Using VR for Training how to Conduct A Tire Change on an Aircraft

Abstract

Verbatim from Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an affordable and increasingly common tool for training. Twenty-four Aviation Maintenance Science students were randomly assigned to a VR group or a Traditional Training (Demonstration) group for a Cessna tire change module. The VR group spent about 5 minutes interacting with the VR application where they completed several actions to replace a tire. The Traditional group watched the course instructor change a tire in the maintenance hangar. One week later, students from both groups changed a tire in a real-world environment. Time to complete tasks were measured for locating the procedure in the manual, jacking the airplane up, removing the cotter pin, removing the wheel, replacing the wheel, and jacking the airplane down. Participants self-reported on a scale of 1(Not helpful at all) to 10 (Extremely helpful) how beneficial they felt their training session was. The Traditional group was significantly faster than the VR group in locating the procedure in the manual (a task not conducted in the VR application). No other difference in time to complete tasks were found. The Traditional group rated their training as significantly more helpful for changing the tire than the VR group did. Except for downjacking the aircraft, a significant correlation was found between the more helpful students found their respective training and the faster they completed each task. Although the VR application was not better than the Traditional Training for the real-world task, finding VR training not worse than Traditional training for transfer of task warrants further study.

Authors

• Lee, Christopher J., M.S. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Dattel, Andrew R., Ph.D. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Valderrama, Michael Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Goodwin, Trevor Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Keywords

• Virtual Reality
• Maintenance
• Education