The Effects of Stereopsis and Immersion on Bimanual Assembly Tasks in a Virtual Reality System

Assembly tasks are an essential component in complex operations done by a large number of humans on a regular basis; examples include system maintenance (preventive and corrective), industrial production lines, and teleoperation. Having access to superior and low-cost solutions that can be used to train personnel who need to conduct these tasks is essential. Virtual reality (VR) technology, with its immersive and non-immersive display solutions combined with hand controllers suitable for bimanual operations, is especially appealing for training purposes in this domain. We designed and executed a user study in which we tested the influence of stereopsis and immersion on execution of bimanual assembly task and examined the effects of tested system configurations on symptoms of cybersickness. Our user study, with its between-subjects format, collected comprehensive data sets in four distinct experimental conditions: immersive stereoscopic (IS), immersive nonstereoscopic (INS), non-immersive stereoscopic (NIS), and nonimmersive non-stereoscopic (NINS). The results of this study suggest that IS platforms are the most promising contenders for an efficient system solution, and that NINS solutions that use larger screens (like a TV set, in our case) may also be considered. It is encouraging that no significant simulator sickness issues were recorded in any condition. The results of this study provide important input and guidance that people who work in the training domain need to have before making decisions about the acquisition of new solutions for assembly task training.