Development of a Physiological Responsive CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) Fuel Channel Assembly VR Tool Prototype
Lillian Fan, Kody Wood, Álvaro Uribe-Quevedo, Sharman Perera · 2021
Virtual reality (VR) has been gaining momentum as an engaging platform for delivering immersive and engaging learning experiences. The navigation of virtual worlds allows users to explore environments and objects otherwise unavailable in a classroom setting. For example, understanding the assembly and inspection of the CANDU (CANada Deurerium Uranium) 6 reactor's fuel channels require students to rely on pictures, diagrams, videos, and computer-assisted engineering tools that lack immersion and realism. Understanding the fuel channel components in proper scale is relevant to identify sag deformations that can cause pressure tube failure to force a reactor shutdown. This is critical as fuel channel inspections need to be conducted under timed conditions to avoid harmful radiation exposure. To better understand how stress scenarios may affect user performance, physiological measurements have been used in virtual training and serious games. We hypothesize that physiological measures can be proactively used to provide real-time feedback while performing a task in VR to increase awareness about challenges otherwise unknown to the user. This paper presents the development of a VR prototype for CANDU assembly, where skin response and muscle activity measures provide information about challenges experienced during a preliminary study where participants assembled a fuel channel and answered some questions about the process.