Multiple perspectives integration for virtual reality-aided assemblability assessment in narrow assembly spaces

Virtual reality (VR) has been proved as a promising tool for industrial design, but the traditional VR interface of first-person perspective (1PP) is not efficient to support assemblability assessment in narrow assembly spaces. In this paper, we proposed the multi-perspectives interface (MPI) which integrates the 1PP and the third-person perspective (3PP) using the handheld world-in-miniature (WIM). The MPI allows users to simulate the assembly operations in a natural manner similar to 1PP, while providing users with an overview of the assembly status through the WIM to assess the assemblability with superior spatial awareness. Two studies were conducted to test the performance of the proposed MPI. The first study tested user's interaction performance in MPI using a common interaction task, which reveals stronger spatial awareness in MPI than in 1PP without the cost of losing natural interaction. Based on the results of the first study, the second study tested the performance, usability, and workload of MPI in an assemblability assessment task. The results show the advantages of MPI in the reachability evaluation in the narrow spaces. The main contribution of this paper is improving the interface and user-interface interaction in VR-aided assembly assessment system to improve user's interaction performance and assessment ability in narrow assembly spaces.