Put on your virtual reality goggles and step into the future. The promise of immersing yourself in a digital world, or merging the virtual and physical worlds, has excited science-fiction writers for decades. The actual reality has pretty much always failed to live up to the hype.
Until now. There are several virtual reality and augmented reality products that are putting tools into the hands of engineers to improve products and processes. Engineers are finally getting to grips with how to best use CAD models, documentation and other data with virtual and augmented reality technology.
Although virtual reality equipment is often associated with cumbersome helmets and video gaming, the most common industrial use has become the “powerwall”. In this application, a projector displays a large 3D image, while multiple users wear 3D glasses, similar to those used in cinemas. The systems optically track the position of the main user via the glasses, automatically adjusting the position of the image to suit the user’s perspective. Interaction with the image, normally a CAD model, is via a handset control which is also optically tracked.
Growing interest
The approach is not new and not fully immersive, but crucially adds enough depth and perspective to CAD models to provide extra benefits for engineers and designers. One of the leading companies in the market is France’s ESI Group, with its virtual reality solution IC.IDO (I see, I do). Michael Kerausch, ESI’s director of product marketing and business development, says the group’s industrial customer base is growing as the hardware and software improvements leverage the business value.
“We have year-on-year solid growth of customers and interest is always growing,” he says. “Some of our customers have implemented IC.IDO as an integral part of their product development process. Others, who started later, are learning the benefits fast.”
Bombardier Transportation received IC.IDO at its Hennigsdorf site near Berlin last year. The factory begins making an order for C30 metro trains for Stockholm this month, but the trains have already been built and stripped down many times in the site’s virtual reality (VR) centre.
The IC.IDO software at Hennigsdorf’s VR centre consists of four projectors and a large screen, about half the width of a cinema screen. The ESI Group software takes Catia V5 CAD models via a product lifecycle management system and displays an image of the design combined with all the available engineering data. That image is the only way of achieving this – that’s 440,000 different pieces of CAD data, amounting to 6GB, streamed onto the screen without a pause as it moves. The software can also display models of virtual humans to help engineers tweak the ergonomic aspects, with a large database of postures and movements to choose from.
Engineers use IC.IDO to detect clashes between components and assess the amount of space for things such as doors and covers, simulating to a certain extent the movements of parts and humans. The development team can reduce the number of physical mock-ups it needs and identify any design problems early, says Susanne Hellwig, team leader for virtual reality and modelling at Bombardier: “We use VR to speed up engineering and convince the customer about modifications. It won’t get rid of mock-ups completely, but we can postpone them to a later stage, which saves money.
“The human models can show the optimum view for the driver, so that we can guarantee the view for the full range of driver heights. This is all done even in the concept phase before design reviews.”
The Stockholm C30 design is the first time the company has used VR for manufacturing and assembly planning, says Hellwig. Engineers are able to plan operations down to the single bolt and then produce assembly videos.
Five Bombardier sites are so far equipped with IC.IDO. The company believes it can save up to 70% of the cost of producing prototypes. However, Hellwig says enthusiasm for VR among engineers has varied. “It’s dependent on the engineer and the age of teams. The younger teams are more receptive,” she says. “Soon, though, everyone will have to use it.”
She says the next steps for VR will be to improve the physics engine and include more physical attributes from the Catia models. “We could demonstrate how components and cables move while in use on the track under real circumstances so engineers can free up space and simulate things like gravity,” says Hellwig.
In contrast to rail, the automotive sector has been an early adopter of VR systems. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) commissioned its first VR cave in 2007 at its design studio in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and soon reaped the benefits from it. In 2010 the company said the system had saved it £8 million in development costs, with engineers using it to optimise interior space and ergonomics, for the routeing of wiring and pipework, and for examining crash performance and aerodynamics.
Adding value
Now, five years later, Brian Wakefield, VR and high-end visualisation technical lead at JLR, says he is still “banging on doors” to get people to listen about the value of the technology. He says engineers are constantly improving the standard of graphics of both the computer models and the environments to make VR more useful.
An early part of JLR’s vehicle development process involves getting an entire body of the car machined in aluminium. Engineers then stick Post-it notes on the sections where they have problems or ideas. “We want to do that in virtual reality, in a realistic environment,” says Wakefield. “There’s a lot of work going on in creating the right data and then getting our engineers to mark the virtual model instead of the physical one.”
But Wakefield is wary of overhyping VR technology. JLR’s VR cave became part of the company’s advertising, in a scene in which an actor walks into a darkened room and verbally instructs “Cave on”. In fact the machine is not voice-operated, but this did not stop a senior executive from mistakenly issuing the same verbal instruction during a management visit, says Wakefield. “The cave is a useful tool, but add in the entertainment and the hype and you get something else,” he says.
“The biggest barrier is people and culture. Some people don’t have the vision to look forward. Hardware and software are catching up, but the biggest barrier is belief and trust in the technology.”
Whereas virtual reality aims to immerse the user completely, augmented reality (AR) aims to mix digital information with reality. The user wears a headset or glasses, or uses a tablet or smartphone that has a camera. In either hardware situation, computer-generated graphics and text are supplied to the device and laid over the user’s real-world view.
One of the most compelling use cases for AR is remote working and maintenance. What better way to make someone an instant expert in something than by presenting them with all the knowledge and training contained back at the office in front of their faces when they are out on a job? It’s an enticing concept, but only recently has the hardware of head-mounted displays and software been available to achieve it.
Shipshape reality
One of the world’s leading implementations of augmented reality can be found at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), which is owned by Northrup Grumman and builds aircraft carriers and submarines for the US Navy. The company, based in Portsmouth, Virginia, has been experimenting with AR since 2011 in the development and manufacturing of products.
Mechanical engineer Mary Claire McLaughlin is part of a 20-strong team at NNS that evaluates where AR could be used, judges if it will improve efficiency and lower costs, and works out how to implement it. Most solutions use iPads and target markers which have to be pre-attached in the work environment. The 2D fiducial markers provide dimensional data and product model information.
The team has conducted 35 projects, out of which four can be classified as really successful, says McLaughlin. “The uses include inspection and quality assurance, work instruction and training. In the future we are looking at using it for workflow management and operation, safety and logistics,” she says.
One of the major restrictions of this type of AR is that it needs at least one of the user’s hands to hold the iPad and requires space. This has been a determining factor in several of the projects. There are also issues around occlusion and depth realisation. It is also worth considering the low volume of NNS’s business.
NNS’s implementation is not the only way to use AR in an engineering workplace. Many companies are already using the technology in product design and development. A leading example comes from a European research project conducted with John Deere in Germany. The company’s factory in Mannheim develops and manufactures tractors and other agricultural vehicles.
Paul Greif, digital manufacturing lead at John Deere, agrees with McLaughlin that 3D models have been key to creating AR and VR applications with value for the company. John Deere started experimenting with VR 10 years ago.
“If you don’t have the right CAD models, you can’t show anything,” he says. “We are building to order in Mannheim and we need to manage each vehicle and each piece of a vehicle independently. When 80% of a new model of tractor consists of old components, that is not always so easy.”
The ‘digitisation’ of legacy components and the preparation of data for use in AR and virtual reality applications can easily become too onerous, Greif warns. But, when the 3D CAD data is all present and correct, the benefits can be munificent.
The company uses CAD data to help prepare manufacturing areas, to make tools, to create assembly instructions and training materials, for product development, for virtual prototyping and assembly, for quality inspection and in customer service. It also holds “E-build” events to flag up production issues as early as possible. These events involve engineers and technicians from design, manufacturing and logistics and use AR and VR extensively to visualise models.
The application of virtual reality technologies is growing. Increases in the fidelity of the graphics and the raw power of computers also mean that more uses are being found. Yet the technology to make use of all this in a real-life, moving situation, an augmented reality, is perhaps still on the cusp of being realised.
It is only a matter of time before the fast-paced innovation of the IT sector provides a viable solution, and the companies ready to employ it will reap rewards.
In focus: Headsets and helmets
One way of solving the problem of having to hold a device to display an augmented version of reality is to wear it.
Several head-mounted display devices are now commercially available that meet this demand – to varying degrees of success – and they open up the possibility of using augmented reality in the workplace.
There are two main types of wearable AR devices. Transparent head-mounted displays (HMDs) overlay graphical and textual data in front of the user’s view. Examples include the Epson Moverio, the Holalu and the Daqri. Opaque HMDs such as Google Glass, Vuzix and the Brother Airscouter assign a certain part of the user’s display for graphics and text. Both types have advantages and disadvantages. Most people find that opaque HMDs have a minimal burden, whereas transparent HMDs have heavier optics in front of sight and can suffer from ‘rainbow’ diffraction issues. So the practicality of wearing them for long periods is questionable.