Investigating motor skill training and user arousal levels in VR : Pilot Study and Observations

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) for skill training is seeing increasing interest from academia and industry thanks to the highly immersive and realistic training opportunities they offer. Of the many factors affecting the effectiveness of training in VR, the arousal levels of the users merit a closer examination. Though subjective methods of measuring arousal exist in VR literature, there is potential in using cost-effective sensors to directly measure these from bio-signals generated by the nervous system. We introduce the design of preliminary observations from a pilot study exploring user’s arousal levels and performance while executing a series of fine motor skill tasks (buzzwire tracing). Future directions of the work are also discussed.