Our Concept

Professional maintenance work is usually performed as a series of well-defined steps that form a maintenance procedure. These procedures are documented in a corresponding maintenance manual. To map this approach to training software, Telespazio Germany has developed a perfectly suitable virtual maintenance trainer (VMT) concept. The scope of our VMT simulations is defined by a set of maintenance procedures. The simulated equipment is represented in 3D graphical models. The user can navigate in the 3D world and interact with the model in different ways; for instance, inspecting a component, operating a control, removing and replacing parts, finding faults and repairing faulty items accordingly. Students can do all this in free play, but the main didactical feature is the computer-guided mode. The maintenance procedures can be loaded into the VMT and then can be used for: 

• Automatic demonstration (the computer executes the steps) 
• Computer-guided operation (the user executes the steps; the computer assists if necessary)
• Evaluation of the student’s skills (the user executes the steps; the computer monitors the user’s performance)

With these features, a VMT not only replaces the original equipment, but also provides the essential capabilities of a fully-fledged training tool.