Virtual Reality Training System Using an Autonomy Agent for Learning Hospitality Skills of a Retail Store

Training systems are well known as one practical usage for Virtual Reality. Previous works of hospitality services have mainly focused on some situations which target customers who are face-to-face or whose position is located at their seats in a store. However, there are some types of customer service businesses, such as retail stores, which should serve customers who patrol a store to find desired products. In this study, we developed a VR training system in which customer agents autonomously form a path based on the location of product shelves in the VR store and patrol those paths. We aim to facilitate learning some skills for the hospitality service of a retail store, such as understanding the entire store's perspective, serving customers in need, and not obstructing their paths. Customer agents patrol paths and interact with products by finite state machine system. If agents have an interest during patrolling, they look for shoppers (i.e., trainees) to ask about the location of products. In this paper, we described the autonomy agent and serving systems for trainees in detail.