Human-Centered Assembly Process Validation in Virtual Reality using Tool-, Part- and Auxiliary Geometry Tracking

Virtual reality has become a common tool in vehicle development for both product and process development. For product improvement, design reviews are carried out in VR, for process improvement, assembly feasibility analyses. The involvement of developers, factory and production planners, as well as those who will be directly affected in the future, such as customers, assembly workers or maintenance staff, allows good products and mature processes to be designed at an early stage of development. In this article, human-centered improvement of product assembly and maintainability is considered in VR. In order to represent assembly conditions in VR as close to reality as possible, the use of tracked real tools, parts and auxiliary geometries is tested in addition to virtual representations. More realistic assemblability analyses could be achieved with the use of these tracked real tools, parts and auxiliary geometries, which provide passive haptic feedback. In the daily VR application for design reviews and assemblability analyses, the use of purely virtual parts and tools has proven itself for reasons of simplicity, for assembly training this passive haptic feedback has potential.