Augmented Reality Application for Assembly Design of Cycloidal Gearbox

Abstract

Modern productions are moving towards full automation of product manufacturing, however, for now some physical
 processes cannot be fully automated, and that is why it remains some manual performance using labor resources. Similar processes occur both in mass production and in individual or experimental production.
 In the startup project LineBar, it was proposed to use a cycloidal gearbox to increase the torque of the stepper motor, however, due to the complexity of the design, it was required to develop the tolling to reduce the time for assembly operation settlement. Augmented reality technologies were used to implement such a task.
 This paper presents the tooling development process. It is described a preparation of 3D model of cycloidal gearbox for Unity application, which has all the necessary functions to create the tooling. The process of basic functionality development is shown, which is a display of 3D model on prepared marker, assembly and disassembly animation of cycloidal gearbox. To expand the functionality, the ability to step-by-step switch the animation of gear assembly has been added. Animations are controlled using the created "Animation", "Forward" and "Back" buttons.
 The process of the annotation development function of 3D models is described, namely the creation of 3D annotation objects, the development of the information display function considering a placement of component unit at the center of the screen, and the implementation of the annotation reversal function when the user's camera is rotated.
 The result of this work is created application, which can be used to reduce the time for the assembly operation of the cycloidal gearbox. It was found a 30% time reduction for assembly operation using the application compared to the regular method.
 For future work, it is proposed to automate the preparation of 3D models, their animation and annotation in the Unity environment, to reduce the time for expanding the application functions, which will affect the scaling the application to larger production.