Virtual Environments for Training: From Individual Learning to Collaboration with Humanoids

The need for virtual environments for training is not to be demonstrated anymore: lower costs and risks, no need for available equipments to train on and control of pedagogical situations are examples of the numerous benefits brought by the use of Virtual Environments (VEs). Among the existing VEs for training, only a few provide collaborative training opportunities. However, VEs can bring other assets for collaborative training: the possibility to collaborate with distant people via the Internet and the opportunity to train with virtual humans, so that the trainee can train not only everywhere but also at any time. Therefore, we have decided to enhance our platform for virtual training environments, by adding collaboration opportunities and integrating humanoids. This platform has been specifically designed for training on procedures (especially industrial maintenance procedures) rather than on technical gestures. We are now interested in collaborative procedures.

The work presented in this paper is both the integration and the continuation of previous research activities performed in our team (BUNRAKU, at IRISA) dedicated to humanoid animation [1], humanoid behavior [2] and collaboration [3]. In OpenMASK5 , our Virtual Reality platform, existing features are already deployed to enable collaboration, but at the interaction level. We rely on these facilities to model a higher level of collaboration: collaboration of activity that occurs at the scenario level.

After analyzing the existing Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) for training and the functionalities they must offer, we will first expose the models that we put forward and then finish presenting GVT 4 , the industrial application in which they are being integrated (Fig. 1 and2). Those concepts will be reviewed in the following state-of-the-art. We will first present existing CVEs for training, then we will expose the awareness issue, followed by the requirements for collaborative scenarios and last of all we will describe the use of virtual humans in CVEs for training.

Among existing CVEs for training, we will only describe the most relevant ones. COVET (COllaborative Virtual Environment for Training) [4,5,6] is a prototype of multi-user teletraining application which allows users, represented by avatars, to learn how to replace a faulty card on an ATM switch. It remains a very basic CVE for training since only one user can interact with the objects in the scene (for example the trainer who demonstrates the procedure). The others can only watch this user’s avatar acting, change their points of view, move and chat. Steve [7,8] has been extended to support team training [9,10]: students must learn their individual roles in the team and how to coordinate their actions with their teammates. Steve agents can play two pedagogical roles: either tutor or substitute for missing teammates.

The MRE (Mission Rehearsal Exercise) [11,12] system is a VE for training which has been designed to teach critical decision-making skills to small-unit leaders in the U.S. Army. In this application, there is only one trainee but he must collaborate with virtual humans able to converse, show emotions and reason. SecuReVi (Security and Virtual Reality) [13] is a CVE to train firemen officers for operational management and commandment. This application is based on the MASCARET [14] model that organizes the interactions between agents and provide them reactive, cognitive and social abilities. The goal is to train teams to collaborative and procedural work.

The first important need in a CVE is awareness: a user must be aware of the other users populating the environment and their actions. A common solution is to embody the user into an avatar, which can be humanoid. Benford et al. [15] identified issues that the use of an avatar can solve in a CVE: presence, location and identity being the most fundamental ones. Fraser et al. [16,17] introduced means of representing the user activity in a CVE. For example, they proposed to use a wire-frame or transparent pyramid of vision to visualize the field of view of one user. They also proposed to extend the avatar’s arms to touch the artefact (wire-framed) when portraying the grasping/moving of that object. As we have seen, several possibilities exist to deal with awareness in a CVE but the avatar appears to be the most meaningful one: “without sufficient embodiment, users only become known to one another through their (disembodied) actions; one might draw an analogy between such users and poltergeists, only visible through paranormal activity” [15]. Several types of avatars can be used to achieve these goals, from the most symbolic one, such as a head and two hands to symbolize a real trainee in Steve or a simplified body in COVET, to the most realistic one, such as the humanoids in SecuReVi and MRE.

Existing ways of writing procedures can be found in [18], but for collaborative procedures an essential notion remains missing:

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