Interactive Product Simulation Environment for Assessing Assembly and Maintainability Tasks

This paper presents the design and implementation of an interactive product simulation environment for supporting interactive assembly and maintenance tasks. The system architecture of the constraint-based virtual environment is based on the integration of components such as OpenGL Optimizer, Parasolid geometric kernel, a Constraint Engine, an Assembly Relationship Graph (ARG) and a task model. The approach presented in this paper is based on pure geometric constraints. Techniques such as automatic constraint recognition, constraint satisfaction, constraint management and constrained motion are employed to support interactive assembly operations and realistic behaviour of assembly parts. The user inputs are handled using a task model based on Augmented Transition Networks (ATN). The current system has been evaluated using two industrial case studies.