Using VR as a Tool for the Automated Capture and Formalisation of Engineering Knowledge

The effective capture of legacy knowledge and information during all aspects of the product development cycle is one of the biggest remaining challenges in engineering companies. Life Cycle Engineering requires the capture of engineering information and knowledge created during design sessions to support knowledge reuse, product reengineering and training. In the past, many attempts have been made to determine if this is possible; however, those that are partially successful are very time consuming, expensive to implement and interrupt the engineers’ creativity. This work investigates and demonstrates new and novel paradigms for knowledge and information capture by adapting and applying a well recognised knowledge capture methodology to suit the non-intrusive automated real time logging, capture and post processing of engineering knowledge using a head-mounted display virtual reality (VR) design system. This logging is accomplished during individual cable harness design tasks carried out by 12 cable harness design engineers from five industrial partners to demonstrate the effective, unobtrusive and automatic capture and representation of various forms of engineering design knowledge and information. The formats were subsequently evaluated by the engineers to determining those they consider best at conveying design knowledge and information for other engineers.

Table Top Augmented Reality System for Conceptual Design and Prototyping

The AugmenTable is a desktop augmented reality workstation intended for conceptual design and prototyping. It combines a thin form factor display, inexpensive web cameras, and a PC into a unique system that enables natural interaction with virtual and physical parts. This initial implementation of the AugmenTable takes advantage of the popular open source augmented reality software platform ARToolkit to enable manual interaction with physical parts, as well as interaction with virtual parts via a physically marked pointer or a color-marked fingertip. This paper describes similar previous work, the methods used to create the AugmenTable, the novel interaction it affords users, and a number of avenues for advancing the system in the future.

Towards a Scalable ESPINA for Neuroscience Data Analysis

ESPINA is an image segmentation tool designed to analyse microscopy images in order to identify neuronal structures and to produce 3D models of these structures. This tool allows to display three-dimensional volumes using auto-stereoscopic monitors. It was initially designed for workstations, but when data volume management or its processing complexity makes unfeasible the implementation of the new tools on these computers, it is necessary to resort to computing servers that delimit response times or by means of scalable solutions and algorithmic optimizations. This paper analyses the migration of this tool from the original implementation to a scalable solution and describes the experience achieved during the development of the workstation version. The proposed alternative is a distributed version of the tool that delegate heavy-computational processes to a cluster, improving the performance of the system in a master/slave architecture.

Effect of the Immersion Level of a Virtual Loader Simulator on the Sense of Presence

In mobile machine industry, work machine simulators can be used to save time and costs in product development and training. However, investing into expensive or difficult-to-use technology should be avoided if it does not affect measurable user performance or feeling of presence. At Tampere University of Technology, a virtual loader simulator has been constructed in an three-wall walk-in virtual environment. The goal of this research was to investigate how the immersivity of the simulator affects testers’ feeling of presence. A total of 25 test users performed two test runs each with different simulator setups, and the presence level of each user was evaluated by a questionnaire after both runs. The results indicate that switching from 2D view to 3D stereoscopic display did not significantly affect the sense of presence. However, with the motion platform, the test users reported clearly higher presence ratings than without it. In addition, we examined some effects of the users’ backgrounds: Test users who had experience from driving large work machines reported lower presence ratings than those without such experience. The sense of presence for frequent computer players was higher than for non-players, but only in one simulator setup.

Linear Static, Real-Time Finite Element Computations Based on Element Masks

This paper presents a new method for the manipulation of a given CAE domain in view of VR based explorations that enables engineers to interactively inspect and analyze a linear static domain. The interactions can ideally be performed in real-time in order to provide an intuitive impression of the changes to the underlying volumetric domain. We take the approach of element masking, i.e. the blending out of computations resulting from computational overhead for inner nodes, based on the inversion of the stiffness matrix. This allows us to optimize the re-simulation loop and to achieve real-time performance for strain and stress distributions with immediate visualization feedback caused by interactively changing boundary conditions. The novelty of the presented approach is a direct coupling of view dependent simulations and its close linkage to post-processing tasks. This allows engineers to also inspect the changes of the stress field inside of the volume during, e.g. cross sectioning.

Virtualization of Industrial Consumer Products for Haptic Interaction Design

The haptic feedback perceived during the interaction with consumer products is an important aspect since it concurs in creating, together with the aesthetic features and sonic feedback, the emotional response during the first contacts with a product. And this may be decisive for the user’s decision of purchasing a product instead of another one. So the design of the haptic behavior of interaction elements of products can be both a successful strategy for capturing consumers’ attention but even a need for avoiding problems during the use. The paper describes the process of virtualization of the interaction with an industrial consumer product by means of haptic, sound and visualization technologies in order to obtain a prototype (interactive Virtual Prototypes) useful to design and test the haptic feedback of interaction elements directly with end users.

User-Centered Design and Evaluation of an Interactive Visual-Haptic-Auditory Interface: A User Study on Assembly

Utilizing user-centred system design and evaluation method has become an increasingly important tool to foster better usability in the field of virtual environments (VEs). In recent years, although it is still the norm that designers and developers are concerning the technological advancement and striving for designing impressive multimodal multisensory interfaces, more and more awareness are aroused among the development team that in order to produce usable and useful interfaces, it is essential to have users in mind during design and validate a new design from users’ perspective. In this paper, we describe a user study carried out to validate a newly developed haptically enabled virtual training system. By taking consideration of the complexity of individual differences on human performance, adoption and acceptance of haptic and audio-visual I/O devices, we address how well users learn, perform, adapt to and perceive object assembly training. We also explore user experience and interaction with the system, and discuss how multisensory feedback affects user performance, perception and acceptance. At last, we discuss how to better design VEs that enhance users perception, their interaction and motor activity.

Usefulness of Virtual 3D Modeling to Visualize the Effect of Uncertain Data in Groundwater Solute Transport

Immersive virtual reality models can be effectively used in understanding the system behavior. It will also help the students to understand the influences of boundary conditions by reflection. In particular, those systems which are not suitable for laboratory experiment can be handled using virtual reality platform. In this research, groundwater solute transport simulation was developed as a laboratory module. Groundwater system movement takes place beneath ground. Recently, several sites were contaminated due to manmade activities. This complex process is very difficult to understand with varying boundary conditions. If there is an uncertainity associated with the modeling parameters, remedial alternatives planned may be not as effective as expected. Behavior changes under these circumstances can be tackled through a sensitivity analysis and incorporated in virtual 3D. In this study, by varying the hydraulic conductivity systematically in different layers, the possible variations in the groundwater contamination plume movements were examined for different simulation time domains with remedial alternatives.

An Augmented Reality Based Application for Furnishing Configuration and Evaluation

Virtual reality as the way to display digital models and to interact with them has flourished in industrial contexts some years ago, both for design and marketing reasons. However, some specific sectors, e.g. furnishings and garments, would prefer to evaluate their products in a real environment, where their models could be easily placed, and where the interaction with them could take place in a natural way. These requirements suggested the design of an application, based on the augmented reality, which allows users placing digital models of pieces of furniture in real domestic environments, verifying their dimensional and aesthetic compatibility with the existing context, and interacting with them to test functional behavior and usability issues. Such a project would result interesting both for possible customers and for designers, because some important design hints could come from its adoption. An application prototype has been developed and tested in the field in a couple of case studies.