virtual reality
VR and Teleoperation internship project
•Implemented a coupling strategy for the haptic teleoperation system to VR, for maintenance tasks at a thermonuclear plant (ITER).
• Developed and demonstrated virtual assistive features (with VR and haptic feedback) for maintenance engineers to practice and better visualize their actual task to be done at the ITER plant.
• Performed initial user study of the implementations which indicate good usability and user satisfaction.
HTC VIVE
(VR)
Geomagic Touch (haptics)
VR and Teleoperation internship project
The project involved working with the Geomagic Touch (haptic device) and VR to create virtual environments to give maintenance engineers an environment to train their tedious and risky operations to be performed at a thermonuclear plant (ITER). The OpenHaptics Unity plugin helped in connecting the Geomagic Touch to Unity, which enabled the synchronous control and feedback of virtual elements with real world movements done by the user.
One important and common maintenance task is to replace the BSM cooling pipe without touching the Steering Mirrors in the ITER Upper Launcher as shown in the image above. The first part of this task, i.e. carefully moving the maintenance tool and fixating it at the designated marking on the pipe was simulated on Unity, with 3D models of the Upper Launcher obtained from 3DS max. To get a better understanding of the surroundings, I had the idea of creating an environment where 2 users can interact with each other and use virtual tools for better visualization and understanding of the scene and therefore the task. These 2 users would be:
1. the teleoperator using the haptic device to move the tool and perform the task by looking at the screen with virtual assistive features like danger warnings through visual feedback and slight screen movement, as is possible in the real-life task.
2. a virtual assistant, who helps the teleoperator perform his task by providing their POV to the teleoperator along with more virtual features like teleportation through the scene, making objects transparent, providing assistance with laser pointers, beams, flashlights, etc.
Click on the gifs below to see these features.
A 2x2 case user evaluation was conducted with 12 participants, to evaluate the different features. The results were positive and pointed towards good usefulness, likeability and user acceptance for the 2 user case discussed above.