Virtual Reality in Assembly Simulation

This thesis presents frameworks, algorithms, and techniques in order to make the application of virtual reality for virtual prototyping feasible. Virtual assembly simulation is focused on in particular. The contributions are in the following areas: high-level specification of virtual environments, efficient interaction metaphors and frameworks, real-time collision detection and response, physically-based simulation, tracking, and virtual prototyping application development. A framework for authoring virtual environments is proposed. The main premise for the proposed framework is that it should be easy for non-computer scientists to author virtual environments. Therefore, the concept of actions, events, inputs, and objects is introduced. These entities can be combined to virtual environments by the event-based approach. Collision detection is one of the enabling technologies for all kinds of physically-based simulation and for virtual prototyping. This thesis proposes a collision detection pipeline as a framework for collision detection modules. Subsequently, several algorithms for all stages of the collision detection pipeline are developed and evaluated. Interaction in virtual environments comprises many different aspects: device handling, processing input data, navigation, interaction paradigms, and physically-based object behavior. For all of them, techniques, frameworks, or algorithms are presented in this thesis, with a particular emphasis on their application to virtual prototyping. Finally, virtual prototyping is discussed in general, while the virtual assembly simulation application is described in more detail. All frameworks and algorithms have been implemented in the commercial VR system Virtual Design II.