A Transferable Psychological Evaluation of Virtual Reality Applied to Safety Training in Chemical Manufacturing

Abstract

High-profile accidents in the Chemical sector across research and manufacturing scaleshave provided strong drivers to develop a new benchmark in safety training and compliance. Herein, we describe the design, implementation, and standardized psychological evaluation of virtual reality (VR) applied to process safety training. Through a specific industrial case study, we show that testable learning of complex safetyspecific tasks in VR is statistically equivalent to traditional slidebased video training. However, VR training presents a measurable positive improvement on trainees' perception of overall learning and their feeling of presence in the task during training. It has also been shown that knowledge retention from video lectures can be overestimated, if not controlled. Through these resultsand our transferable blueprint for robustly assessing any new VR training platformwe envisage a range of technologically enabled efforts to enhance safety performance in both laboratory-and plant-based activities. Implications for physical resource-saving projects are also described.

VR-based health and safety training in various high-risk engineering industries: a literature review

“…Moreover, Dhalmahapatra et al ( 2021) compared the degree of learning level between fully immersive VR and non-immersive VR and their t-test results showed that the safety performance of the users trained in the fully immersive VR was better than the performance of the users trained in the non-immersive VR. On the other hand, researchers such as Beh et al (2021), Joshi et al (2021), Leder et al (2019), Makransky et al (2019), Osti et al (2021), and, Poyade et al (2021, showed in their respective studies that there was no statistical difference on the performance scores between the VR-based training and traditional training methods. Although the results confirmed that there was no statistical difference, four out of six studies stated that performance gained by the VRbased training was higher than using the traditional training method.…”

“…Lastly, some authors (Fig. 2) used VR technologies to train users on both risk assessment and machinery/process operation in construction (Adami et al, 2021;Dhalmahapatra et al, 2021;Le et al, 2015;Nykänen et al, 2020;Sacks et al, 2013), chemical process/laboratory (Makransky et al, 2019;Poyade et al, 2021), manufacturing and assembly (Leder et al, 2019), and mining (Liang et al, 2019) as shown in Fig. 5.…”

“…Among the 16 papers, the results of a statistical test (e.g., t-test, ANOVA, etc.) of the 13 studies showed that the VRbased training provides a greater degree of reaction level compared to the traditional setting (Ahn et al, 2020;Beh et al, 2021;Diego-Mas et al, 2020;Guo et al, 2012;Joshi et al, 2021;Leder et al, 2019;Li et al, 2012;Makransky et al, 2019;Nykänen et al, 2020;Pham et al, 2019;Poyade et al, 2021;Sacks et al, 2013;Xu & Zheng, 2021). For instance, Leder et al (2019), stated that compared to the traditional training method (PowerPoint presentation), there was a better degree of immersion and presence in the semi-immersive VR (CAVE) condition.…”

Reassessing Undergraduate Polymer Chemistry Laboratory Experiments for Virtual Learning Environments

“…Regardless of the approach, virtual translations of chemistry wet laboratories can demonstrate significant safety considerations without the risk associated with in-person laboratories (e.g., mixing incompatible chemical waste). 26 , 27 In this section, we describe each of these virtual learning categories and highlight some representative works.…”

“…Thus, digitization methods that allow students to make decisions about reaction conditions show the most potential for retaining the value of synthetic experiments (e.g., DLE, 72 VR, 32 and “labventures” 76 ) and offer some improvements toward safety education as well as material costs. 26 , 27 For more advanced, senior-level laboratories where the goal extends beyond concept familiarity, these options fall short and represent a critical need for future development—particularly in the case of upper-division synthetic experiments.…”