Cave automatic virtual environments for research into occupational safety and health - Practical recommendations and solutions for the construction

Virtual reality (VR) is a methodology for the investigation and evaluation of human-machine system design from early stages in life cycle product development. This enables the integration of ergonomic design strategies and principles in product design. Moreover, it makes VR increasingly important for applications in occupational safety and health at work such as the development and evaluation of new safety concepts or the execution of usability studies in human-machine interface design. VR is also a technology for the simulation of dynamic environments and enables a user to interact with representations of real or imaginary worlds. VR technology nowadays is already available as off-the-shelf solution, with the consequence of limitations for potential applications and with constraints of validity of VR results for systems design. Over the past year, the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance (IFA) has built a VR system designed to meet their specific requirements for research into accident prevention and product safety. The paper will concentrate on technical issues of the design process according to potential applications and ergonomic design requirements as well as on solutions and practical recommendations that lead to the development of the VR system within the IFA.