Spring 1996 € Volume 1 € Number 1
Virtual Reality Follows the Prototype Path
Technology makes important inroads in manufacturing sector, but not
without resistance from CAD devotees.
By David Greenfield
After years of being looked down upon as an entertainment plaything by most
of the business world, virtual reality (VR) is now making important inroads
into the heart and soul of the global economy -- the manufacturing sector.
The technology has achieved its lofty status in the corporate world by following
the prototype pathway.
Prototyping is one of the necessary evils of manufacturing; the trial-and-error
method can be one of the more costly steps in the development of a new product
or design.
Speaking at the Virtual Reality World '95 Conference in San Jose, Calif.,
in the United States, Joel Orr, president of Orr Associates International
and director of the League for Engineering Automation Productivity, offered
his take on the prototyping dilemma.
"The cost of (creating and testing prototypes) rises steeply the further
into the process we go because more resources are involved. The further
we go, the more it costs to correct mistakes. Because our design processes
are not deterministic, it behooves us to make our mistakes as early in the
process as possible."
Numerous studies have also shown that a major portion of the final cost
of a project is front-loaded into the design process, which typically starts
with the generation of a computer-aided design (CAD) followed by prototyping
and testing. Such studies serve to boost the cause of VR in manufacturing.
With VR, products can be designed and tested in a virtual world, eliminating
the need for full-scale, real-world models and mock-ups. Virtually everything
a manufacturer needs to know about the integrity of a new design or product
can be determined via VR without the cost and time of building prototypes
and then spending additional time testing these prototypes in various real-world
situations.
Making It Happen
Intelligence Systems Solutions Ltd. of Salford, U.K., is one company that
is trying to bring the gospel of virtual reality prototyping to the manufacturing
realm. Easier said than done. The problem, says Andrew Connell, head of
VR research at the firm, is that many manufacturers are still not convinced
of the virtues of VR in the prototyping arena.
"They often don't understand what they can get from virtual reality,"
Connell said at the San Jose conference. "They have computer-aided
design technology, but they really don't know what VR is going to do on
top of that. They think virtual reality is just going to be faster computer-aided
design running on a bigger computer. So we supply education, and we do that
through the use of demonstrators."
Connell offered the demonstrator Intelligence Systems Solutions developed
for Rolls-Royce Air Engines Division as an example of VR capabilities in
prototyping. The demonstrator he built for Rolls-Royce is designed for the
company's Trent 800 engine, which is used in the Boeing 777.
A major obstacle for Connell in implementing his VR concept at Rolls-Royce
was getting the company past its reliance on computer-aided design followed
by real-world prototyping. This was especially tough since Rolls-Royce's
customers desired this approach.
"Their customers wanted it proven to them that the engine could be
assembled and maintained," said Connell. "So Rolls- Royce would
build a physical mock-up. They would build this perfect model of the engine
out of wood, metal and plastic. It costs about £2 million to produce,
compared to about £5 million for an engine. All this does is let them
prove that they can put the engine together, that it can actually be maintained,
and that certain operations can be done in a certain order and within a
certain time."
Rolls-Royce held CAD in such high esteem that Connell said of the company,
"They used CAD as if one day they'll have a perfect photocopying machine
or printer that they'll just feed the CAD design into, and one day they'll
get an engine out of the other end, if they design appropriately for that."
Although CAD data is the building block upon which virtual prototyping is
developed (virtual prototyping interprets CAD data), CAD design is incredibly
more complex than virtual design. The level of detail necessary in CAD is
not required of virtual prototyping. "We (virtual reality users) need
something you can actually get in; put on a headset, get in there with your
hands and actually pick up a tool and try and go out and use that tool,"
Connell said.
The virtual reality demonstrator that Intelligence Systems Solutions developed
for Rolls-Royce was a basic VR unit. It enabled Rolls-Royce to plug its
CAD data into the VR system, tag certain items like bolts with functionality,
and then pick up a tool and try to hit those bolts. Users of the VR system
could also remove brackets and pipes from the engine. This type of virtual
interaction with the engine under design, without a prototype physically
being built, allowed Rolls-Royce to make an assessment of how easy it would
be to build the engine and maintain it.
While VR holds great potential for its numerous uses in prototyping, it
is currently being held back by its connection to CAD, according to Orr.
"Most systems calling themselves computer-aided design systems are
nothing of the sort. They are no more computer-aided design systems than
word processors are computer-aided writing or computer-aided literature
systems," he said. "Word processors help you type, and most computer-aided
design systems help you create drawings. Even those that do 3-D and solid
modeling."
However, VR is not seeking to replace CAD, Connell added. "VR is something
else you can do with CAD data when you've gone to the trouble of producing
it."
Other companies through which Intelligence Systems Solutions is working
to bring VR into the prototyping arena include Vicker Ship Building and
British Nuclear Fuel.
Vicker Ship Building, like Rolls-Royce, was used to building scaled, prototype
models, some costing £20 million. To determine if water could reach
valves and components on a submarine, for example, the company would typically
build an expensive model and place it in a tank. VR has changed all of that.
British Nuclear Fuel is using VR to develop control room design, an offshoot
of which could be used by manufacturers to improve the design of their production
lines. According to Connell, British Nuclear Fuel desires two things from
its VR-designed control room: 1) high-performance visualizations so that
all company principals can gather in one room with a 3-D projection system
and evaluate a design; and 2) a headset VR system that allows the user,
sitting at any terminal in the plant, to see and interact with the displays,
warning lights, etc., at any other terminal.
Not Ready for Prime Time
Virtual reality is still a few years away from being used to completely
design a product. Intelligence Systems Solutions, for example, employs VR
to evaluate engine designs, not to actually design and build engines. But
the writing is on the wall.
"Just two years ago in the U.K.," said Connell, "you'd never
have gotten politicians or people in positions of power anywhere near a
VR system. But a couple of months ago, we actually got the chief scientist
of the U.K., William Stewart, into a headset and photographed in it. He
was quite happy to be associated with VR as a technology. And that, for
us in the U.K., is a huge change, because up until recently, VR was seen
as a technology the government hoped would go away and die quietly."
David Greenfield is the managing editor of CiME and OR/MS Today, and
the managing editor of two newsletters, Intelligent Manufacturing and Intelligent
Systems Report.
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