手溶接技能訓練のための簡易VRシステムと実作業との技能レベル比較による有効性の検討

摘要

溶接作業は，人に対する危険性や仕事の"きっさ"のために古くから，自動化が進められてきた.しかし，鉄鋼構造物における狭い空間の内側溶接や多品種少量生産等，自動溶接が難しいものも多く残存する.このことから，手アーク溶接等の手動による溶接作業は将来的にも皆無とすることは不可能と思われる.%Although many welding processes in metal work have been robotized recently, manual welding is still indispensable in custom-made production and high-mix low-volume production. Hence, skilled welders are needed widely in metal work industry. On the other hand, many people have little inducement to be a new welder because of high physical risk and severeness in skill training. Virtual Reality technology may give an effective solution on it and various high-tech VR systems for the training have been proposed so far. However, high tech is not always necessary to build a VR training system, as long as skill to be trained is analyzed and situation is confined. In this paper, the authors have proposed a simple VR training system for steady state electrode manipulation skill in manual arc welding, which adopted neither force display nor mixed reality, and verified its effectiveness. As a result, a good correlation is found between skills in VR welding and in actual welding from experimental tasks, and consequently the proposed system can train novice welders safely.