Virtual and augmented reality in end of arm tooling project and assembly

• Autor(a) principal: Pesca, Pedro Miguel Tomé dos Reis
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/40733
• topic: Extended reality; Virtual reality; Augmented reality; End of Arm Tooling; Mechanical design; Assembly guidance

New and improved technologies emerging with the fourth industrial revolution present new opportunities across the industry. Among such paradigms that have rapidly evolved in the last decade are Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), collectively constituting part of Extended Reality (XR). These technologies offer great value to the manufacturing industry in the form of a wide range of specialized applications with the potential to improve the effectiveness and speed of various existing processes. One such activity that stands to potentially benefit from the adoption of XT technologies is the development and assembly of End of Arm (EOAT) projects for robot applications. In partnership with the industrial equipment manufacturing company Fluidotronica, the purpose of this work is first to find aspects of EAOT project design, development and assembly that can me augmented by the usage of VR and AR technology, and then develop XR solutions to respond to those opportunities, checking in with industry professionals throughout development to tailor the applications to their needs. During this project, three functional prototypes of XR applications were developed for different platforms, including Head Mounted Displays (HMD), mobile devices, and Augmented Reality Smart Glasses (ARSG), covering different phases of the EOAT project. The developed work was showcased and tested by industry professionals and students, to assess its usability, comfort and efficiency.