Augmenting Welding Training: An XR Platform to Foster Muscle Memory and Mindfulness for Skills Development

Metal welding is a craft manufacturing skill that can be unusually difficult to externalize and represent to novices. Building competency requires an apprentice to iteratively practice embodied skills and sensitize themselves to a sensorially complex practice. To explore these challenges, we identified opportunities for mixed reality and meditation processes to augment welding training and practice. Our demo showcases an extended reality (XR) welding helmet and torch that enhances the embodied learning of welding. We do this in two key ways: biometric sensing that enhances mindfulness and stress management in sensorially challenging environments, and combined motion-sensing and visual XR feedback that helps improve proprioceptive and embodied learning. Formats avail