Haptic virtual reality assembly – Moving towards Real Engineering Applications

The use of virtual reality (VR) in interactive design and manufacture has been researched extensively but its practical application in industry is still very much in its infancy. Indeed one would have expected that, after some 30 years of research, commercial applications of interactive design or manufacturing planning and analysis would be widespread throughout the product design domain. Similarly, investigations into virtual environments (VE) for assembly and disassembly tasks have been carried out for many years. Given the availability of moderately-priced high performance computing technology, many of these virtual manufacturing interfaces which only stimulate the visual senses – have made actual physical contact during product development an increasingly rare occurrence.