Virtual Rebar Bending Training Environment with Haptics Feedback

All building constructions in India use construction rebars (steel concrete reinforcing bars) to provide structural reinforcement for concrete work. This necessitates experts in bending and cutting rebar to correctly size and bend the long steel rods before they can be installed. This paper presents the design and working of a novel haptic based barbending simulator for providing training to novices in the construction rebar bending skill. The haptic training device is combined with a virtual environment and is capable of providing manual skill training and evaluation of prior knowledge of the trainees. The proposed system provides a multi modal simulation environment with visual, audio and haptic feedback. A preliminary evaluation of the barbending simulator prototype is also presented which demonstrates that this simulator could be used by the trainers and novices to learn the basic principles of bending a rebar.