Concept of Virtual Reality Training of Facility Management Employees Using Eye Tracking

Abstract

In facility management, employees’ unique skills and high technical knowledge are necessary to operate buildings efficiently and safely. Employees acquiring professional skills requires the use of an effective training procedure. Traditional facility management training is often challenging because it requires using real devices in a work environment. It is only sometimes possible to stop these devices. Additionally, there is a risk of equipment damage or injury to employees. Therefore, organizing staff training in virtual reality (VR) seems interesting. Properly conducted training of employees in virtual reality allows for the reconstruction of identical test conditions for all participants, thanks to which high comparability of training results is achieved. In addition, virtual training allows for an in-depth analysis of each participant’s results. We can carefully analyze their movement, how they perform a task, and even their attention directed to critical elements. To be able to perform such an in-depth analysis, it was proposed to use eye-tracking technology in the VR glasses used during training and evaluation in the VR environment. Eye movement tracking allows for an accurate analysis of the focus of each participant on the critical elements of the devices in the decision-making process. It enables obtaining much more comprehensive information on the concentration and correctness of the employee’s actions. The result of the conducted research is the development of the concept of a VR environment for training and evaluating facility management staff using eye-tracking technology, enabling employees to improve and verify their qualifications in a very comfortable way without the need to access the existing infrastructure. The developed training procedure also allows the classification of training participants as fast and slow learners, which is very important for the employer, as it identifies employees who require additional training support. The developed approach was verified during the realization of selected training conducted with 100 employees working in facility management and was implemented as a commercially offered training service.