Abstract
Laboratory tasks are a powerful pedagogical strategy for developing competences in science and engineering degrees, making students understand in a practical way the theoretical topics explained in the classroom. However, performing experiments in real conditions is usually expensive in terms of time, money and energy, as it requires expensive infrastructures that are generally difficult to maintain in good conditions. To overcome this problem, virtual reality has proven to be a powerful tool to achieve sustainability, making it easy to update laboratories without the need to acquire new equipment. Moreover, the ability to introduce practical knowledge into classrooms without leaving them, makes virtual laboratories capable of simulating typical operating environments as well as extreme situations in the operation of different devices. A typical subject in which students can benefit from the use of virtual laboratories is robotics. In this work we will develop an immersive virtual reality (VR) pedagogical simulator of industrial robotic arms for engineering students. With the proposed system, students will know the effects of their own designed trajectories on several different robotic arms and cell environments without having to buy all of them and being safe of damaging the cell components. The simulation will be checking for collisions of the elements in the scene and alert the student when they happen. This can be achieved with a robotic simulator, but the integration with immersive VR is intended to help students better understand robotics. Moreover, even having a real robotic arm available for students, with this proposed VR method, all the students have the opportunity to manage and learn his own version of the robotic cell, without waiting times generated by having less robotic arms than students in classroom.
Highlights
Virtual reality technologies have been available for a long time to support the teaching-learning process in articles of educational scope [1]
The toolboxes and simulators found in the literature can be used to teach robotics but they are very limited compared to an industrial robotic simulation software with advanced capabilities such as collision detection, easy-to-use cell design interface, trajectory visualisation and checking, connection to physical robot, robot program generation that works on the real robot etc
To take advantage of this technology, custom simulation software has been expanded and adapted to design, visualize, monitor, perform safety checks and path planning, and to use immersive virtual reality as a tool to improve the quality of teaching in robotics technology courses
Summary
Virtual reality technologies have been available for a long time to support the teaching-learning process in articles of educational scope [1]. The majority of works focus on assessing the quality of immersion and interaction with the environment, as well as the convenience of its use [18] Aspects such as the promotion of imagination and creativity remain most of the time in the background, especially since they are difficult to be measured objectively [19]. Bell and Fogler [20] set out a series of recommendations to guide educational methods to students based on the teaching-learning styles of the instructor and the student, which often do not coincide
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