DEVELOPMENT OF A MULTI-USER VR ENVIRONMENT FOR TRAINING ELECTRICIANS TO WORK ON ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION NETWORK.

Formal education and corporate trainings have adopted immersive virtual reality environments for a while. These environments are great tools to represent real world situations, conditions and scenarios that may be dangerous or not easily reproducible on classrooms, laboratories or formal trainings. That is exactly the case of the electric power distribution network in Brazil, as the electricians take formal trainings but usually do not experience the real conditions of the network and the several risks involved with it during these trainings. As a result, the electricians may not be confident to work on the network and may eventually harm themselves or take longer than expected to find and fix problems on the network. Thus, this paper presents the development of a virtual reality environment for training electricians to work on the distributed network, considering the safety procedures, the proper usage of equipment and the collaboration with other electricians. With the proposed environment, it is expected to enhance the knowledge and the skills of the electricians and, therefore, have better professionals working on the distribution network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]