Virtual Reality Content-Based Training for Spray Painting Tasks in the Shipbuilding Industry

Training is one of the representative application fields of virtual reality technology where users can have virtual experience in a training task and working environment. Widely used in the medical and military fields, virtual-reality-based training systems are also useful in industrial fields, such as the aerospace industry, since they show superiority over real training environments in terms of accessibility, safety, and cost The shipbuilding industry is known as a labor-intensive industry that demands a lot of skilled workers. In particular, painting jobs in the shipbuilding industry require a continuous supplement of human resources since many workers leave due to the poor working environment. In this paper, the authors present a virtual-reality-based training system for spray painting tasks in the shipbuilding industry. The design issues and implementation details of the training system are described, and also its advantages and shortcomings are discussed based on use cases in actual work fields.