Framework enabling the design of Virtual Environments used for simulation of assembly operations

摘要

Virtual Reality has proven its potential in manufacturing field and is nowadays being used in industries in various ways, such as training, decision support, product design and review, simulation of industrial operations for design/redesign of shop floors and workflow. Despite the potential of this technology in manufacturing, trained personnel with expertise in the Virtual Reality field is needed to prepare the Virtual Environment and user interactions with it, a process which is time consuming, leading industries to drop the idea of investing in such technology. This work proposes a flexible framework that enables the design of Virtual Environments that replicate industrial shop floors, allowing the simulation of real-life assembly operations using immersive Virtual Reality. The developed framework provides the necessary tools and functionalities allowing non expert users to create 1:1 replicas of industrial shop floors in a non-time-consuming way. Moreover, it allows rapid modelling of tasks and actions involved in assembly operations, facilitating the work needed to be done for the preparation of Virtual Reality based assembly simulations. A case study is used to demonstrate the approach.