Assembly Simulation on Collaborative Haptic Virtual Environments

Abstract

Currently, Virtual Environments (VEs) are used within engineering industry: physical prototypes or mock-ups\nare replaced by virtual prototypes. Increasingly, these VEs also allow designers and engineers to carry out\nassembly/disassembly processes and assembly sequences before any physical prototype is built. Moreover,\ndifferent designers or engineers, which may be situated in the same or in geographically dispersed locations,\noften collaborate in the design of products. This allows developing more complex products within a shorter time\nscale and lowered costs. On the other hand, the utilization of haptic feedback has been found to significantly\nenhance task performance, for instance, in assembly tasks. In this paper we describe an assembly simulation\napplication on a collaborative haptic virtual environment, where several users interact with virtual models to\nperform assembly operations within the same virtual scene. The paper also summarizes results achieved with\nexperiments which evaluated different collaborative architectures. Furthermore, it reports on the goals that can\nbe achieved and the limitations for haptic collaborative interaction in each case.