Baukastenbasierte Konstruktion in immersiven Virtual Reality-Umgebungen

Virtual reality (VR) systems have experienced an enormous development during the past 20 years. Missing practice-relevant functionalities and high capital spendings still prevent medium-sized enterprises from introducing VR technologies and appropriate processes. In the context of the VRAX cooperative project of the Fraunhofer institutes IGD, IWU, IAO and IPK VR technologies are to be used for constantly immersive product development processes. By the example of machine tool manufacturing a VR based solution is developed in analogy to existing CAX infrastructures. For the first time VR technology is used as an active development and construction medium for modeling, i.e. data produced in VR are led back again into the total process of development. Based on the VR system Avalon, jointly developed by the Fraunhofer IGD and the ZGDV, an immersive user interface to this system is being developed. Completely free interaction, as known from CAD Applications, is only of limited use in VR environments. The main issue thereby is the missing physical feedback. Thus precise inputs are very difficult to achieve by the user. Hence the construction process has to be highly simplified. Machines usually are build up from standardized construction units with defined junction points. A goal of this work is the development of a positioning assistance that supports the user while interacting with construction units in the immersive VR environment. Construction units can be selected from a freely configurable virtual construction kit. The positioning assistance helps the user to place and connect the pieces in the virtual scene. Connected units remain moveable while defined constraints (e.g. hinge-joint) are assured by the positioning assistance. The developed solution has been integrated by the example of the construction of a machine tool. For the demonstration of the achievable joint behaviour another construction kit was build, with which a human skeleton can be built up and is moveable according to the defined joints