A system for digital mock-up's and virtual prototype design in industry: 'the Virtual Workbench'

In this paper, the authors present the "Virtual Workbench" and discuss its application to industrial engineering. The Virtual Workbench is a design table under which a stereoscopic image is projected. The method of virtual holography is used to generate visual feedback. The user can grasp and manipulate objects with a data glove and 6-D pointing pen within the scene. The overall system is fully interactive and provides a multi-modal man-machine interface. The system is designed to prepare and evaluate digital mock-ups of industrial machinery. The authors' goal is to provide an environment which is suitable to evaluate a virtual prototype before a commitment is made to its physical construction. Their system can be used to verify and analyse a complex construction in virtual space before the real prototype is built. By means of a digital mock-up, production costs can be decreased due to the fact that inadequacies of the overall prototype system can be analysed during the design stage. The Virtual Workbench environment entails functions to handle virtual objects such as place and staple them. There are also utilities provided to navigate through virtual space. Special modules enable the functional simulation of simple constrains and complex kinematics such as robotics systems and allow animation of sequences.