Extended Reality Applications for CNC Machine Training: A Systematic Review

Extended reality (XR) as an immersive technology has gained significant interest in the industry for training and maintenance tasks. It offers an interactive, three-dimensional environment that can boost users’ efficiency and safety in various sectors. The present systematic review provides information based on a Scopus database search for research articles from 2011 to 2024 to expose 19 selected studies related to XR developments and approaches. The purpose is to grasp the state of the art, focusing on user training in goals or tasks that involve computer numerical control (CNC) machines. The study revealed approaches that broadly employed XR devices to execute diverse operations for virtual CNC machines, offering enhanced safety and skills acquisition, lessening the use of physical machines that impact energy consumption or the time invested by an expert worker to teach an operation task. The articles highlight the advantages of XR training versus traditional training in CNC machines, revealing an opportunity to enhance learning aligned to the industry 4.0 (I4.0) paradigm. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications are the most used and are mainly centered on a single-user environment. In addition, a VR approach is built as a proof of concept for learning CNC machine operations, considering the key features identified.