Michael Otto

Using Scalable, Interactive Floor Projection for Production Planning Scenario

This paper introduces a novel system for interactive evaluation and verification of manual assembly processes. The approach utilizes a scalable, interactive augmented floor surface in combination with a tangible tabletop hardware and a material zone planning software. The floor projection hardware is used for true to scale assembly station layout visualizations. The advantages and drawbacks of a low-cost, true to scale visualization will be discussed. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed system during a production planning workshop has shown that the low-cost implementation is suitable for reaching the production planning goals. Additionally true to scale visualizations support users to estimate distances, speeds and spatial relationships within the digital layout. In future work, motion capture and tracking systems will be integrated and registered to the augmented floor surface area, the projection area will be extended and efficiency improvements will be showed up.

Behavior Analysis of Human Locomotion in the Real World and Virtual Reality for the Manufacturing Industry

With the rise of immersive visualization techniques, many domains within the manufacturing industry are increasingly validating production processes in virtual reality (VR). The validity of the results gathered in such simulations, however, is widely unknown—in particular, with regard to human locomotion behavior. To bridge this gap, this article presents an experiment analyzing the behavioral disparity between human locomotion being performed without any equipment and in immersive VR while wearing a head-mounted display (HMD). The presented study (n = 30) is split up in three sections and covers linear walking, non-linear walking, and obstacle avoidance. Special care has been given to design the experiment so that findings are generally valid and can be applied to a wide range of domains beyond the manufacturing industry. The findings provide novel insights into the effect of immersive VR on specific gait parameters. In total, a comprehensive sample of 18.09km is analyzed. The results reveal that the HMD had a medium effect (up to 13%) on walking velocity, on non-linear walking toward an oriented target, and on clearance distance. The overall differences are modeled using multiple regression models, thus allowing the general usage within various domains. Summarizing, it can be concluded that VR can be used to analyze and plan human locomotion; however, specific details may have to be adjusted to transfer findings to the real world.

Virtuelle Techniken und Semantic-Web

Virtuelle Techniken (VT) haben schon seit vielen Jahren in der Industrie in vielfaltiger Weise Eingang gefunden. Ebenso gibt es durchaus umfangreiche, interoperable Anwendungen in anderen Fachdomanen, die auf etablierten, standardisierten Web-Technologien beruhen. Daher liegt es nahe, die unbestreitbaren Vorteile von semantischen Web-Technologien fur den Aufbau interoperabler VT-Anwendungen zu nutzen. In diesem Kapitel werden daher grundlegende Elemente und der aktuelle Entwicklungsstand virtueller Techniken sowie auch die Grundkonzepte semantischer Web-Technologien beschrieben. Im Uberblick wird deutlich, dass zahlreiche Einzelkomponenten fur komplexere VT-Anwendungen zusammenarbeiten mussen und dass neben der Interoperabilitat die erreichte Gesamtperformanz einer Anwendung eine essentielle Anforderung fur die ARVIDA-Referenzarchitektur ist. Die gewunschte Kapselung der hier beschriebenen Einzelelemente in Web-Dienste ist bisher noch im Forschungsstadium. Eine detaillierte Beschreibung, wie semantische Web-Technologien aus dem ARVIDA-Projekt heraus fur VT-Anwendungen angewendet werden, ist in den Folgekapiteln zu finden.