Assembly simulation on collaborative haptic virtual environments

Currently, Virtual Environments (VEs) are used within engineering industry: physical prototypes or mock-ups are replaced by virtual prototypes. Increasingly, these VEs also allow designers and engineers to carry out assembly/disassembly processes and assembly sequences before any physical prototype is built. Moreover, different designers or engineers, which may be situated in the same or in geographically dispersed locations, often collaborate in the design of products. This allows developing more complex products within a shorter time scale and lowered costs. On the other hand, the utilization of haptic feedback has been found to significantly enhance task performance, for instance, in assembly tasks. In this paper we describe an assembly simulation application on a collaborative haptic virtual environment, where several users interact with virtual models to perform assembly operations within the same virtual scene. The paper also summarizes results achieved with experiments which evaluated different collaborative architectures. Furthermore, it reports on the goals that can be achieved and the limitations for haptic collaborative interaction in each case.