Virtual Reality Application for Simulation and Off-line Programming of the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV-M1 Robot Integrated with the Oculus Rift to Improve Students Training

AbstractThe overall purpose of this project is to test the impact and potential benefits of Virtual Reality technology by improving the current training methods for the operation of the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV-M1 Robot. The final application aims to achieve this goal by increasing the user's interactivity with the robot's features inside a virtual environment developed using the game engine Unity and the Oculus Rift headset for the virtual visualization. By using this application, on site operation time is decreased mainly by allowing off-line programming of the equipment. It also allows universities without or with limited industrial machinery to provide their students a way to learn and practice on industrial automation and robotics simulation topics without inconvenience. The application is designed to decrease the student's learning curve by displaying a complete virtual environment where the tridimensional model of the robotic arm can be visualized and programmed according to the real model's parameters and specifications. Joint type moving sequences are compiled into a file which afterwards can be transferred to the robot for real testing and execution. The system integrates a set of joysticks that allows the user to program each of the robot's joints as well as display several features of it in the virtual environment such as animations, images and text information that simplify the instructions shown in a printed manual. In order to find an optimized, collision-free movement sequence between two points an A* shortest path algorithm is implemented using some of the built-in tools and plugins available in Unity and its Asset store. As a result of this last feature, the application can create a comparison between the user's input sequence and a computer generated sequence based on the A* algorithm