Constrained behavior manipulation for interactive assembly in a virtual environment

Interactive assembly based on virtual reality offers users an opportunity to interact with a virtual prototyping rather than a physical one and to validate assembly performance of products in a realistic way. Such evaluations could be available very early in the product development process ahead of any physical prototyping. The reduction or elimination of physical prototyping needed for assembly performance validation can substantially shorten the product development cycle and reduce development cost. Although virtual reality technology provides users an intuitive and immersive 3D interactive interface, it tends to be inaccurate because humans have difficulty in performing precise positioning tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to implement effective motion manipulation for assembly operations so that users can perform precise positioning efficiently in virtual assembly systems. This paper presents a constrained behavior management approach that realizes assembly relationship recognition, constraint solution and constrained motion for interactive assembly in a virtual environment. A constrained behavior manager (CBM) has been developed and applied in virtual assembly systems. Test cases confirm that constrained behavior manipulation proposed in this paper not only increases the efficiency of assembly relationship recognition, but also facilitates assembly interaction in a virtual environment.