BMW-Virtual and quick
August 25, 2005
Car manufacturers are taking the lead when it comes to the use of augmented reality technologies
The world is three dimensional - something we discover for ourselves each and every day. Many people, however, find it fascinating to venture into virtual worlds. What are the possibilities when both worlds are brought together and the real world is linked to the virtual word? Scientists already know the answer to this question: augmented reality (AR) - an extended reality.
This technology represents a new form of communication between man and machine, involving, for example, the provision of context-sensitive (i.e. it alters depending on the object being looked at) information via data glasses. The data glasses allow the observer to view two overlapping worlds simultaneously - the real world and the virtual world. In contrast to "virtual reality" however, the real world in this case is not entirely replaced; instead it is merely supplemented.
This technology is, as already mentioned, still relatively new and, unlike the research work on virtual reality, development is still in its very early stages. Since around 1993, however, work has being going on on a large number of different projects. At the end of the sixties attempts were already underway to create semi-permeable glasses for viewing 3D graphics. Up until now, however, none of these projects has represented a comprehensive research area in itself. One of the most important has been ARVIKA. Completed in 2004, the aim of this publicly-financed lead project was to look into the possible uses of augmented reality in complex industrial applications.
Augmented reality in the car industry
When it comes to use of augmented reality solutions, the car industry is without any doubt leading the way. The BMW Group was the first car manufacturer to develop a mature and now actively employed 3D-supported application based on the results of the ARVIKA project. The application in question is used for the stud welding of prototypes, with approx. 300 - 400 mounting bolts being welded onto the vehicle shell. Previously the positions of the mounting bolts had to be obtained "manually" from the CAD (Computer Aided Design) system, partly in the form of printed lists, and then, with the support of a mechanical measuring system, traced onto the shell. Afterwards the bolts had to be manually positioned and welded to the marked locations. Dr. Jörn Trilk, head of CA processes and methods for total vehicle integration and trial vehicle production at the BMW Group: "Before the introduction of AR technologies, workers had to trace individual welding points and spent several days on each vehicle doing this. Now with a camera and welding gun that incorporates a navigation display, our employees can do the job in a quarter of the time. The time saving is therefore enormous."
How was this achieved? As early as 2001 the BMW Group got together with Ulm-based system retailer, viception, measuring technology supplier, A.R.T. Advanced Realtime Tracking, and welding device manufacturer, Emhart Teknologies Trucker, to develop this innovative solution, which went through several intermediate stages before it was ready to be employed. The mechanical measuring system was replaced with an optical, i.e. non-contact, measuring system, its development requiring six measuring cameras to be placed above a processing station in a BMW Group workshop in Munich. The measurements are forwarded to a visualization computer which feed the display on the welding gun and an additional monitor at an entry station. Furthermore the welding gun was equipped with active measuring system markers and mechanically reconstructed so as to incorporate additional open-loop control electronics and a navigation display.
The data lines for the measuring technology, control and display functions were directly integrated into the welding gun's cable loom. As a result, the operating point of the gun can now be tracked within the measuring area using non-contact technology. The vehicle shell is equipped with passive references marks and is calibrated into the measuring system, i.e. marked down to exact size. The position and orientation of the vehicle can therefore be altered at will during processing, and software for system control and navigation was specially developed for processing purposes.
Successful team implementation brings advantages to all
A total of six individuals were responsible for the project and it was completed in close co-operation with the future users in the workshop. Project leader Kay Kindermann: "For us it was particularly important that the ideas of our employees concerning system implementation be directly incorporated into the development process. Our workshop employees were actively involved in the project and provided important information concerning the user and visualization functions. This was the only way of ensuring that workshop implementation of the system would be successful and that the newly-designed processes would actually work on a daily basis and bring us all the desired advantages." There are certainly plenty of advantages. The employees in the workshop benefit not only from the flexibility and high precision of the system, its high performance and the significant time savings, they can also take pleasure from the fact that it is remarkably easy to use. This is because the system does not have a complicated interface; instead it has the appearance of an Excel table. This interface is linked to the visualization system of the welding gun, so that the system can be directly launched and controlled from within Excel. The target co-ordinates are exported from the CAD system into Excel and from there fed into the processing system. During the welding process the actual co-ordinates are fed back into Excel, allowing follow-up checks of the working processes to take place, and contributing to quality assurance.
At the moment the BMW Group only plans to use the AR system in its workshop, and has no plans for its use in mass production. "In mass production we use the latest robots, which work much faster than our AR system. Using robots in the workshop and for quality assurance with respect to prototype construction would be much too expensive. Our AR system is much better suited to this purpose," says Dr. Jörn Trilk.
Virtual worlds are future-proof
The areas of application for augmented reality systems are by no means limited to vehicle manufacture. They are manifold and range from display glasses in museums to uses in medicine and crash testing. In surgery, for example, the 3D data of a patient, e.g. a CT or ultrascan image, can be displayed right next to the patient. Using data glasses the operating surgeon has an unrestricted view of the patient's internal organs and does not need to divert his gaze from the patient during the course of an operation to read data from an external device. It goes without saying that, in medicine especially, the system must be able guarantee absolute accuracy. Also promising is the use of AR systems for the purpose of comparing crash test results. After a crash test the AR system overlays the image of the actual crash vehicle onto the image of the forecast crash vehicle as generated by the simulation. This allows any differences to be immediately recognised and evaluated. AR technologies can also tap into digitally-based information sources for maintenance purposes, displaying new objects in place of old to technicians who are about to carry out a replacement operation, e.g. the replacement of a motor. AR also allows distributed problem solution, with experts communicating directly with local employees over vast distances.
Nevertheless, despite varied and to some extent existing use of augmented reality in industry, research in the area is likely to continue in the coming years and possibly even the coming decades. The area still contains a large number of challenges and unexplored possibilities, and the potential of augmented reality systems seems far from being exhausted. All projects, however, have one aim in common: to allow man and machine to work together and communicate with each other as efficiently as possible.
http://www.bmwgroup.com/news/mail/news_e.shtml??8_5?&pkey=17051&highlight=8&call=4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality
Car manufacturers are taking the lead when it comes to the use of augmented reality technologies
The world is three dimensional - something we discover for ourselves each and every day. Many people, however, find it fascinating to venture into virtual worlds. What are the possibilities when both worlds are brought together and the real world is linked to the virtual word? Scientists already know the answer to this question: augmented reality (AR) - an extended reality.
This technology represents a new form of communication between man and machine, involving, for example, the provision of context-sensitive (i.e. it alters depending on the object being looked at) information via data glasses. The data glasses allow the observer to view two overlapping worlds simultaneously - the real world and the virtual world. In contrast to "virtual reality" however, the real world in this case is not entirely replaced; instead it is merely supplemented.
This technology is, as already mentioned, still relatively new and, unlike the research work on virtual reality, development is still in its very early stages. Since around 1993, however, work has being going on on a large number of different projects. At the end of the sixties attempts were already underway to create semi-permeable glasses for viewing 3D graphics. Up until now, however, none of these projects has represented a comprehensive research area in itself. One of the most important has been ARVIKA. Completed in 2004, the aim of this publicly-financed lead project was to look into the possible uses of augmented reality in complex industrial applications.
Augmented reality in the car industry
When it comes to use of augmented reality solutions, the car industry is without any doubt leading the way. The BMW Group was the first car manufacturer to develop a mature and now actively employed 3D-supported application based on the results of the ARVIKA project. The application in question is used for the stud welding of prototypes, with approx. 300 - 400 mounting bolts being welded onto the vehicle shell. Previously the positions of the mounting bolts had to be obtained "manually" from the CAD (Computer Aided Design) system, partly in the form of printed lists, and then, with the support of a mechanical measuring system, traced onto the shell. Afterwards the bolts had to be manually positioned and welded to the marked locations. Dr. Jörn Trilk, head of CA processes and methods for total vehicle integration and trial vehicle production at the BMW Group: "Before the introduction of AR technologies, workers had to trace individual welding points and spent several days on each vehicle doing this. Now with a camera and welding gun that incorporates a navigation display, our employees can do the job in a quarter of the time. The time saving is therefore enormous."
How was this achieved? As early as 2001 the BMW Group got together with Ulm-based system retailer, viception, measuring technology supplier, A.R.T. Advanced Realtime Tracking, and welding device manufacturer, Emhart Teknologies Trucker, to develop this innovative solution, which went through several intermediate stages before it was ready to be employed. The mechanical measuring system was replaced with an optical, i.e. non-contact, measuring system, its development requiring six measuring cameras to be placed above a processing station in a BMW Group workshop in Munich. The measurements are forwarded to a visualization computer which feed the display on the welding gun and an additional monitor at an entry station. Furthermore the welding gun was equipped with active measuring system markers and mechanically reconstructed so as to incorporate additional open-loop control electronics and a navigation display.
The data lines for the measuring technology, control and display functions were directly integrated into the welding gun's cable loom. As a result, the operating point of the gun can now be tracked within the measuring area using non-contact technology. The vehicle shell is equipped with passive references marks and is calibrated into the measuring system, i.e. marked down to exact size. The position and orientation of the vehicle can therefore be altered at will during processing, and software for system control and navigation was specially developed for processing purposes.
Successful team implementation brings advantages to all
A total of six individuals were responsible for the project and it was completed in close co-operation with the future users in the workshop. Project leader Kay Kindermann: "For us it was particularly important that the ideas of our employees concerning system implementation be directly incorporated into the development process. Our workshop employees were actively involved in the project and provided important information concerning the user and visualization functions. This was the only way of ensuring that workshop implementation of the system would be successful and that the newly-designed processes would actually work on a daily basis and bring us all the desired advantages." There are certainly plenty of advantages. The employees in the workshop benefit not only from the flexibility and high precision of the system, its high performance and the significant time savings, they can also take pleasure from the fact that it is remarkably easy to use. This is because the system does not have a complicated interface; instead it has the appearance of an Excel table. This interface is linked to the visualization system of the welding gun, so that the system can be directly launched and controlled from within Excel. The target co-ordinates are exported from the CAD system into Excel and from there fed into the processing system. During the welding process the actual co-ordinates are fed back into Excel, allowing follow-up checks of the working processes to take place, and contributing to quality assurance.
At the moment the BMW Group only plans to use the AR system in its workshop, and has no plans for its use in mass production. "In mass production we use the latest robots, which work much faster than our AR system. Using robots in the workshop and for quality assurance with respect to prototype construction would be much too expensive. Our AR system is much better suited to this purpose," says Dr. Jörn Trilk.
Virtual worlds are future-proof
The areas of application for augmented reality systems are by no means limited to vehicle manufacture. They are manifold and range from display glasses in museums to uses in medicine and crash testing. In surgery, for example, the 3D data of a patient, e.g. a CT or ultrascan image, can be displayed right next to the patient. Using data glasses the operating surgeon has an unrestricted view of the patient's internal organs and does not need to divert his gaze from the patient during the course of an operation to read data from an external device. It goes without saying that, in medicine especially, the system must be able guarantee absolute accuracy. Also promising is the use of AR systems for the purpose of comparing crash test results. After a crash test the AR system overlays the image of the actual crash vehicle onto the image of the forecast crash vehicle as generated by the simulation. This allows any differences to be immediately recognised and evaluated. AR technologies can also tap into digitally-based information sources for maintenance purposes, displaying new objects in place of old to technicians who are about to carry out a replacement operation, e.g. the replacement of a motor. AR also allows distributed problem solution, with experts communicating directly with local employees over vast distances.
Nevertheless, despite varied and to some extent existing use of augmented reality in industry, research in the area is likely to continue in the coming years and possibly even the coming decades. The area still contains a large number of challenges and unexplored possibilities, and the potential of augmented reality systems seems far from being exhausted. All projects, however, have one aim in common: to allow man and machine to work together and communicate with each other as efficiently as possible.
http://www.bmwgroup.com/news/mail/news_e.shtml??8_5?&pkey=17051&highlight=8&call=4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality
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