Development of virtual reality support to factory layout planning

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology has become ever mature today with affordable and yet powerful hardware. In the manufacturing industry, there is a growing interest of adopting VR to improve existing work procedures. Factory layout planning (FLP) is a long standing area in production engineering that sees great potentials of VR integration. Virtual reality supported layout planning (VLP) is gaining wider attention in research and practice as the virtual environment allows designers to test out "what if" scenarios in relative ease. However, previous research of VLP mostly focus on general layout planning but not the detailed level planning. Also, it is reported that the virtual modeling process is time-consuming and costly. In this study, we propose a point cloud based virtual factory modelling approach for the VLP tasks. It incorporates point cloud representation of physical environment with CAD data to model the virtual factory with the aims of simplifying the modelling process and improving decision-making for the VLP tasks. The proposed approach is exemplified and refined through three industrial cases. The implementations and results of the cases are highlighted and discussed in details. At the end, a general guidance for VLP is extracted and presented for future point cloud based VR support in FLP tasks.

Reconfiguring and ramping-up ventilator production in the face of COVID-19: Can robots help?

“…The attributes forming a decision-making arena for the comparison between layout alternatives are travel distance of operator and material, safety, aesthetics, operator acceptance, ergonomics, throughput etc. [ 65 ]. Simulation tools with digital human and robotic models can be used to design and evaluate workplace layouts for HRC [ 63 ].…”

The Evolution of Virtual Reality Towards the Usage in Early Design Phases

“…After a successful design review, the software can be used to simulate assembly and maintenance work. This includes a complete risk assessment of the required activities, which optimally prepares the staff for upcoming tasks (Berg and Vance, 2017;Gong et al, 2019;Kassem et al, 2017;Wang, 2002). Nevertheless, VR is commonly used in later stages of product development.…”

Industry 4.0 for SMEs

“…It is possible to explain material flows in movement or to simulate critical situation without real production stop. Some research in the usability of virtual devices for factory simulation is described in Żywicki et al (2018), Dong andWang (2018), Gong et al (2019). Augmented reality devices are usually named "smart glasses" and can significantly increase the effectivity of training new workers during their first assembly task (assisted assembly).…”