A New Maintainability Evaluation Method Based on Virtual-real Fusion Scene Construction

Abstract

Maintainability is one important attribute of product quality. Maintainability evaluation is important to reduce maintenance cost and improve availability. With this research work, an effective maintainability evaluation method is proposed by mingling virtual environment and real world physical equipment. In order to reduce the cost of maintainability test scenario construction, the surrounding environment of physical equipment is replaced by virtual model for virtual-real fusion. The virtual environment is mainly used to simulate the impact on maintenance operation space. The difficulty of realizing the test concept deals with how to accurately identify the pose of the physical equipment and register the virtual environment around the physical equipment. In the proposed method, initially the ORB feature of the physical product is extracted through binocular vision. Secondly, the ICP method is used to match the physical product feature with the digital prototype feature, so as to identify the relative pose of the physical equipment. The virtual maintenance environment is then accurately superimposed. Thirdly, the experimental evaluation method of virtual reality fusion maintainability qualitative and quantitative indicators is formulated. Finally, taking an engine as an example, a virtual-real fusion maintainability test case study is carried out to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of maintainability evaluation based on virtual-real fusion test scenario. With 5 test groups, evaluation is carried out in three scenes-real environment, virtual-real fusion and without surrounding environment. Results of the evaluation revealed that error rate of the proposed virtual reality fusion maintainability method are somehow closer to maintainability in real environment. The average error rate of the three maintainability qualitative indexes in the virtual-real fusion scene is 9.90%, whereas the average error of the maintenance time is 3.25%. The proposed system offers an absorbing simulation environment where users are privileged to interact with the maintenance objects. The research work bears great significance in maintenance, product designing, visualization and related domains. As maintenance in real environment happens to be costlier and hazardous, the proposed method is suitable to ensure substantial cost reduction and safety in all stages of maintainability. Moreover, outcomes of the evaluation and the generated data of simulation can be generalized to improve maintainability of equipment.