On Immersive Virtual Environments for Assessing Human-driven Assembly of Large Mechanical Parts

Application of immersive Virtual Reality is advocated for assessing human-based assembly of large mechanical parts, including assembly jigs and fixtures as well as tools used and procedures followed. The primary aim is to enable subjective/customised assessment of the assembly system by the participating human. The secondary aim is to allow recording of the human's main movements in order to analyse them with standard ergonomics tools. Proof-of-concept was sought by a case study, i.e. aircraft wing assembly by riveting, involving a real human worker holding a real tool, whilst all the rest, i.e. avatar, wing, fixtures and factory were virtual. Health risk from assembly tasks was subjectively assessed via a questionnaire. Assembly equipment and procedure were preliminarily assessed by interpreting and applying RULA and REBA protocols. The potential to automate such a tedious task was demonstrated by automatic calculation of body postures from avatar's kinematics.