Virtual and augmented reality support for discrete manufacturing system simulation

Nowadays companies operate in a difficult environment: the dynamics of innovations increase and product life cycles become shorter. Furthermore products and the corresponding manufacturing processes get more and more complex. Therefore, companies need new methods for the planning of manufacturing systems. One promising approach in this context is digital factory/virtual production—the modeling and analysis of computer models of the planned factory with the objective to reduce time and costs. For the modeling and analysis various simulation methods and programs have been developed. They are a highly valuable support for planning and visualizing the manufacturing system. But there is one major disadvantage: only experienced and long trained experts are able to operate with these programs. The graphical user interface is very complex and not intuitive to use. This results in an extensive and error-prone modeling of complex simulation models and a time-consuming interpretation of the simulation results. To overcome these weak points, intuitive and understandable man–machine interfaces like augmented and virtual reality can be used. This paper describes the architecture of a system which uses the technologies of augmented and virtual reality to support the planning process of complex manufacturing systems. The proposed system assists the user in modeling, the validation of the simulation model, and the subsequent optimization of the production system. A general application of the VR- and AR-technologies and of the simulation is realized by the development of appropriate linking and integration mechanisms. For the visualization of the arising 3D-data within the VR- and AR-environments, a dedicated 3D-rendering library is used.