Haptics enabled virtual assembly application for enhanced product design.

摘要

The use of virtual environments offers endless possibilities to an engineer in a manufacturing setting. This thesis deals with the development of a virtual assembly package to aid in the product development cycle. A framework for a user interface is described which will allow engineers to design, manufacture and assemble in a virtual environment. Therefore, prototypes can then be created virtually without expending significant resources or money. In this work, a haptic interface was implemented to allow for assembly to take place with force feedback. In addition, manufacturing statistics were provided through a custom built interface to guide a user on how well the parts they were assembling were produced. Experiments were then carried out in order to prove that haptics could be used to distinguish assembly amongst parts of varying assembly parameters. These experiments then serve to validate the use of virtual assembly in product design.