engleski

Towards immersive designing of production processes using virtual reality techniques

The paper provides a novel approach to the implementation of virtual reality within planning and design of manual processes and systems. The use of hardware and software that is required to perform different production -- especially assembly -- tasks in a virtual environment, using CAD parts as the interactive elements, is presented. Considering the CAD parts, the format conversion problem is comprehensively described and solved using format conversion software to overcome the present poor data connectivity between the CAD system and VR hardware and software. Two examples of work processes have been made in a virtual environment: peg-in-hole and wall socket assembly. In the latter, the traditional planning approach of manual assembly tasks using predetermined motion time system MTM- 2 have been compared with a modern approach in which the assembly task is fully performed within a virtual environment. The comparison comprises a discussion on the assembly task execution times. In addition, general and specific advantages and disadvantages that arise in the immersive designing of production processes using virtual reality are presented, as well as reflections on teamwork and collaborative man-machine work. Finally, novel technologies are proposed to overcome the main problems that occur when implementing VR, such as time-consuming scene defining or tedious CAD software data conversion.

virtual reality ; assembly planning ; human-computer interaction ; concurrent engineering ; MTM

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