Title : Design of an Augmented Reality Environment for MAintainability TEsts of Transport Systems

Project Lead : Adelaide Marzano From : Queen's University Belfast (None)

Dates : from 2014-12-15 23:06:46 to 2015-02-09 18:58:28

Description :

Motivation and objectives :
the project aims to develop an augmented reality (AR) environment in which to simulate a sequence of maintenance tasks within a complex engineering context. An original AR architecture will be developed in order to create unique steps for a real life example maintenance task within a wearable device context. The architecture is based on complex hardware and software technologies available at the Operations Excellence laboratory at Cranfield. A case study will be realized in the aircraft and rail contexts, regarding the maintenance of a mechanical component, which is considered to be an issue that is relevant to any industry. The focus will be on small objects.

Teams :
With a strong background in digital manufacturing methods and industrial collaboration, The Manufacturing group within the Aerospace and Manufacturing cluster focuses on the development and application of advanced simulation tools and virtual environments for improved product and process design concurrency for digital: manufacture, assembly validation & automation, product certification, service performance, decommissioning & recycling.

Dates :
starting date : 19 January, 2015
ending date : 23 January, 2015

Facilities descriptions :
http://visionair-browser.g-scop.grenoble-inp.fr/visionair/Browser/Catalogs/OPSIMLAB.GB.html

Recordings & Results :
the project aims to create an AR\VR demonstrator to illustrate the guidance that can be offered with AR\VR techniques in industrial applications. The realization, in an immersive virtual environment, of maintainability tests and manufacturing systems simulations, above introduced, needs specific requirements: A powerful graphic and calculus system able to manage a great amount of data; A large screen able to visualize complex systems in full scale; Input devices allowing the protagonist of the virtual experience to easily navigate and interact with the virtual scene and other members of the design team to share such experience and review the design; software tools for collision detection, motion programming, kinematics simulation, 3D distance measurements, virtual markup, path recording;

Conclusions :
The present work wants to demonstrate the important potentialities offered from VR techniques in industrial applications, in particular, for maintainability tests on complex assemblies and for the simulation of manufacturing systems. Obtained results not only provide a valid answer to the design questions in the field of maintenance and manufacturing systems simulation, but they make objective the effective applicability of the proposed methodology: in spite of the subjective character of the approach to the simulation, based on the direct manual interaction, the information collected in the case studies, allow to grant the feasibility of tasks and to individualize the design parameters on which operating to better answer the functional requirements and, finally, to improve the design. After each design modification, a new phase of simulation follows in order to verify the effective satisfaction of the requirements. In particular, the virtual simulation is important also for the training of the staff assigned to the maintenance and manufacturing activities.