Seven Levels of Detail to structure use cases and interaction mechanism for the development of industrial Virtual Reality applications within the context of planning and configuration of robot-based automation solutions

Abstract

The term Virtual Reality (VR), is very well known in the consumer goods and entertainment sector. The visual presentation of the VR environment is typically achieved via stereoscopic head-mounted displays (HMD), and the interaction via a 3D position detection of HMD and additional input devices such as controllers for active user input. While the variety of applications in the entertainment industry is constantly growing and the technological possibilities become more extensive, this trend has marginally established itself in the industry. Even though powerful and affordable VR hardware is available, VR applications are often associated more with gaming than professional industrial applications. In addition, only few interaction mechanisms such as 3D viewing, moving, teleporting and rarely direct interaction capabilities are used in the most industrial VR solutions. The reason for this is often a lack of understanding and structure of use cases and the added value that VR applications and interactions create for companies and their customers. This unnecessarily limits the applicability of new VR applications for the industry. For a better structuring of VR use cases and required 3D objects for targeted user interaction, we introduce seven Levels of Detail. Along these, one VR use case setup is created, to provide examples for classical concept planning and a new knowledge-based process based on engineering Best Practices. For each, we derive adequate prototypical implemented demonstrator stations and necessary interaction mechanisms for VR development. To highlight further VR possibilities, we extend the examples by adding a second use case setup for VR planning and virtual commissioning of industrial human-robot collaboration solutions based on body and hand tracking. Hence, the contribution provides a structured compilation of potential and useful industrial VR planning use case setups and for these relevant interaction mechanisms in combination with concretely implemented examples.