Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
as disassembling different components of an intelligent hydraulic excavator. To make the
disassembly process easy the parts that can be currently disassembled are highlighted in blue
color to help users make their selection.
•
HAMMS: Haptic Assembly, Manufacturing and Machining System. (Ritchie et al. (2008))
HAMMS was developed by researchers at the Heriot-Watt University to explore the use of
immersive technology and haptics in assembly planning. The hardware comprises a Phantom
haptic device for interaction with the virtual environment, along with a pair of CrystalEyes®
stereoscopic glasses for stereo viewing if required. Central to HAMMS is the physics engine,
which enables rigid body simulations in real time. HAMMS logs data for each virtual object
in the scene including devices that are used for interaction. The basic logged data comprises
position, orientation, time stamps, velocity and an object index (or identifying number).
By parsing through the logged data text files an assembly procedure can be automatically
formulated.
•
SHARP: Development of a Dual-handed haptic assembly system (Seth et al. (2008)).
SHARP is a dual-handed haptic interface for virtual assembly applications. The
system allows users to simultaneously manipulate and orient CAD models to simulate
assembly/disassembly operations. This interface provides both visual and haptic feedback, in
this way, collision force feedback was provided to the user during assembly. Using VRJuggler
as an application platform, the system could operate on different VR systems configurations
including low-cost desktop configurations, Power Wall, four-sided and six-sided CAVE
systems. Finally, different modules were created to address issues related to maintenance,
training (record and play) and to facilitate collaboration (networked communication).
• HIIVR: A haptically enabled interactive virtual system for industrial assembly (Bhatti et al.
(2008)).
This system is an interactive and immersive VR system designed to imitate the real physical
training environments within the context of visualization and physical limitations. Head
Mounted Displays are used for immersive visualization equipped with 6DOF trackers to
keep the virtual view synchronized with the human vision, PHANTOM® devices are used
to impose physical movement constraints. In addition, 5DT data gloves are used to provide
human hand representation within the virtual world. The aim of the proposed system is to
support the learning process of general assembly operators. Users can repeat their learning
practices until they are proficient with the assembly task.
As it can be seen, most of the existing multimodal systems in the domain of assembly
and disassembly tasks are focused mainly on their simulation without addressing explicitly
their training. In the next Section, the authors present a new multimodal training system
(combining visual, audio and haptic feedback) for training assembly and disassembly
procedural tasks. Figure 3 shows a comparison among the previous systems and the new
multimodal training system described in the next Section.
3. The new multimodal training system
This section presents a controlled multimodal training system, for learning assembly and
disassembly procedural tasks. This platform supports the approach of
learning by doing
by
means of an active multimodal interaction with the virtual scenario (visual, audio and haptic),
eliminating the constraints of using the physical scenario (such as availability, time, cost, and
