Immersive and Haptic Educational Simulations of Assembly Workplace Conditions

The paper presents a number of different approaches for creation of realistic immersive educational simulations of conditions of a workplace for assembly operations with aid of haptic and Virtual Reality systems. Such simulations can be used for effective training of future operators of a given workplace and testing its ergonomic quality without need of building a physical prototype. The authors have devised several different approaches to preparation of virtual workplace prototypes for training. The basic approach is utilization of immersive VR systems (Head-Mounted Devices combined with user tracking solutions) to create an interactive simulation of a workplace, on the basis of its CAD model and specification of a realized process. The second approach is using a haptic manipulator with force feedback for interaction with a virtual workplace, for more realistic feeling of a realized activity. The third, novel approach is combination of the two previous approaches. A special system was designed and built for this purpose. It uses a large-space robot to allow haptic feedback for a user equipped with an immersive set of devices. More and more often virtual prototypes of the workplaces replace the physical ones as an innovative training solutions that allow to train the future operators or improve ergonomic quality of the workplace. The reason for that is the reduction of costs needed to develop the real prototype of the workstation as well as ability of complex virtual workplaces to change the variants in order to investigate different situations. Usually such workplaces - created as interactive Virtual Reality applications - consist of a visualization operated with aid of advanced Virtual Reality systems and devices. Implementation of an immersive equipment increases sense of user's presence and use of haptic devices with force feedback makes the experience more similar to reality. The level of realism is a very important factor in an immersive and haptic simulations of workstations for training purposes. As a form of instructional simulation, also called educational simulation, immersive and haptic simulations are a powerful learning tools that require trained users to complete tasks or to solve specific problems within VR environment that replicates the real workplace conditions19. Trainings conducted is this way are particularly beneficial when real activities and task conducted at the workplace is too dangerous, too costly or even almost impossible to do. The two basic approaches presented by the authors are innovative and important on their own, but they usually do not mix, as state-of-the-art haptic devices are stationary. Their application heavily limits spatial freedom of a user, which does not affect the level of realism of presented simulations in a positive way. In order to fully simulate the conditions of an assembly workplace, tactile input must be available, with simultaneous immersion of a user into a Virtual Environment (VE) using a HMD or a CAVE system combined with the user tracking solution. The third approach to simulation of workplace conditions, proposed by the authors, allows to bring a realistic force feedback into an immersive visualization. Thanks to this, operations like assembling a threaded joint between two parts can be trained more realistically than before, without need of building a full physical workplace.