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School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University and the Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Virtual Assembly Design Environment (VADE) - School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University and the Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Exciting research toward a useful industrial application of Immersion 3D's CyberGlove® and CyberGrasp™ products is found at Washington State University's Virtual Assembly Design Environment (VADE) research lab. In the VADE lab, both right- and left-hand CyberGloves, along with a CyberGrasp system, are used to permit a wearer to pick up digital components of a CAD part and assemble or disassemble them by hand in real time.
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The Virtual Assembly Design Environment (VADE) has been designed and implemented at Washington State University in collaboration with NIST. Once the engineer designs the mechanical system using a parametric CAD system (e.g., Pro/Engineer), VADE automatically exports the necessary data to the virtual environment through a user selected option in the CAD system.
In the virtual environment, the user is presented with an assembly scene. The various parts are initially located where they would be in the real assembly plant. The VR user can then perform the assembly. This enables the user to make decisions, make design changes, and perform a host of other engineering tasks in the virtual environment. During this process, the virtual environment maintains a link with the CAD system and uses the capabilities of the CAD system wherever required (as described later in this section). At the end of the VADE session, the user would have generated valued design information which is then automatically made available to the designer in the CAD system.
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 VADE has been created to be capable of supporting a variety of VR peripheral devices. The test cases at Washington State University used an implementation with an SGI Onyx2 computer with 6 processors and two Infinite Reality pipes, Immersion 3D's CyberGlove and CyberGrasp, Flock of Birds, and a VR4 head mounted display. Valuable collaborative work was performed with an implementation at NIST which used an ImmersaDesk.
Representative Features and Capabilities of VADE
- Automatic data translation from CAD to VR
- Creation of realistic environment and initial location of parts
- Two-handed assembly and dexterous manipulations
- Capturing assembly intent from CAD system and using it in the virtual environment
- Constrained motion simulation
- Interactive dynamic simulation of parts
- Swept volume generation and trajectory editing
- Parametric design modifications in the virtual environment
- Tools and tool/part interactions (ongoing work)
- Distributed and collaborative assembly sessions (ongoing work)
- Support for grip feedback devices (ongoing work)
- Creation of standards for assembly data and methods (ongoing OPENADE work at NIST)
For information please contact:
Sankar Jayaram
School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-2920
jayaram@mme.wsu.edu
(509) 335-5782
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