Collision detection and part interaction modeling to facilitate immersive virtual assembly methods

Realistic part interaction is an important component of an effective virtual assembly application. Both collision detection and part interaction modeling are needed to simulate part-to-part and hand-to-part interactions. This paper examines several polygonal-based collision detection packages and compares their usage for virtual assembly applications with the Voxmap PointShell (VPS) software developed by the Boeing Company. VPS is a software developer's toolkit for real-time collision and proximity detection, swept-volume generation, dynamic animation, and 6 degree-of-freedom haptics which is based on volumetric collision detection and physically based modeling. VPS works by detecting interactions between two parts: a dynamic object moving in the virtual environment, and a static object defined as a collection of all other objects in the environment. The method was found to provide realistic collision detection and physically-based modeling interaction, with good performance at the expense of contact accuracy. Results from several performance tests on VPS are presented. This paper concludes by presenting how VPS has been implemented to handle multiple dynamic part collisions and two-handed assembly using the 5DT dataglove in a projection screen virtual environment.