Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Propulsion Engineers to be Trained Using Virtual Reality

Starting next academic year, future propulsion engineers and designers at Samara University will be trained with the help of virtual reality. Now teachers are preparing an educational program for a new course with the working title “VR design of engines”.
 

The University scientists developed the computer program for the VR simulator themselves, because third party IT specialists without engineering education struggled to understand the sophisticated “stuffing” of the virtual engine.
 

According to Ilya Leikovsky, Head of the Educational Laboratory of the Institute of Engine and Power Plant Engineering at Samara University, undergraduate students and plant employees receiving additional education will be able to study the design of the NK-8 engine by putting on the VR goggles. The program also simulates its repair, and will prospectively include “operation” and “testing” sections.
 

Finding it difficult to visualize engine parts in your head? VR simulator will help
 

The developers chose the NK-8 engine because it is convenient for the teaching purposes. In the future, other models will be added to the VR simulator.
 

“Modern students, who were practically born with gadgets, find it difficult to visualize the details of the engine in their heads, especially at the beginning of their studies; virtual reality helps to do this. This is how skills are formed. In creating the VR simulator, we drew on the conclusions of foreign colleagues who report that the remaining knowledge is higher in students who use VR in their studies than in those who study the subject in a traditional way,” says Ilya Leikovsky.
 

Next year, the University will begin using the VR simulators to train first- and second-year students and introduce propulsion engineering to schoolchildren as part of career guidance programs. The University’s engineering center has already ordered the development of simpler programs for VR simulators.
 

Samara State Medical University is also actively using virtual reality technology in education. For example, there is a VR simulator at the Department of Operative Surgery. Students put on virtual reality goggles and see the operating field: make incisions, stop bleeding, do stitching. About a dozen virtual reality options for students have already been simulated.
 

Source: rg.ru