Engineering applications
Automotive, Aerospace, Nuclear, Industry
Haption products are used by engineers to solve equipment and system engineering challenges for assembly process planning, 3D parts simulation and realistic immersive experience using 3D video engines such as Unity™, UnReal™, for feasability study, mission preparation and operators training.
Assembly Process Planning
Faster cycles from R&D to production
“We uncovered a handful of fuel lines that required modifications because the parts would not fit into the aircraft as original designed, or would have been damaged upon installation. We’ve estimated savings of about 18 million dollars for this one event alone.”
“We’re using Haption force-feedback devices at our sites of Velizy and Sochaux. We simulate with them roughly 130 assembly processes a year. The investment has long paid off.”
Assembly Process Planning is a very important task in the development of a new industrial product. If not done properly, it can lead to extremely high added costs, resulting from the impossibility to integrate components according to the prescribed assembly procedure. Typical problems are: insufficient room for moving a component to its intended position; screws not reachable with the prescribed tool; not enough visibility for the operator to ensure the quality of the assembly; etc.
The same considerations hold for maintenance procedures, with even more acuteness: in order to reduce maintenance costs, the number of components which the operator needs to disassemble and reassemble should be minimized. As a consequence, space tends to be restricted and overcrowded by other pieces of equipement, limiting the access paths for the component to be changed as well as for the tools.
Throughout the product development process, the assembly or maintenance procedures need to be verified for coherence with the current state of design of the product. The verification can be done with real prototypes or with virtual models. But in the early phases, no physical parts exist which can be manipulated to validate assembly tasks, only the virtual model can be used.
Interact with 3D parts
“The realtime-collision engine HAPTION IPSI allows user to perform assembly and maintenance simulation, with force feedback, directly in Dassault Systeme’s software.
The plugin lets you animate any object (part) or manikin (virtual human) it is particularly efficient to do tooling process reviews or simulation of manual assembly upfront ot the manufacturing process.”
In many cases, the feasibility of the assembly cannot be decided on a simple visual inspection of the 3D model, and more complex investigations are needed. Interactive simulation with haptic feedback recreates a physical interaction with the 3D model, calling upon the cognitive capabilities and understanding of spatial relationships of the user. Through the haptic interaction, the user can make full use of his manual skills, in order to identify bottlenecks, evaluate clearance and explore possible improvements.
By performing the assembly operations “hands-on”, the design engineer or the process planner measures the complexity and evaluates also the ergonomic dimension of the tasks. It reproduces the same kind of physical experience as can provided by a real prototype. As a consequence, it is also available to people with no expertise in CAD, such as ergonomists and senior assembly operators.
In order to simplify the implementation of interactive assembly simulation, Haption provides turn-key solutions and plug-ins for existing CAD/PLM platforms. Currently supported are Catia/Delmia V5™, 3DEXPERIENCE™ and Solidworks™ by Dassault Systemes
Realistic immersive experience using 3D video engines
Haption is working in partnership with several 3D simulation framework third parties.
Such third parties are using 3D video engines such as Unity and UnReal to create realistic immersive simulations.
INTERACT (LS Group)
VR4ROBOTS (TreeC)
TOIA Ltd
In such simulations there is 2 distincts complementary engines that have to be synchronized :
3D visual simulation, this engine work on rendering objects and ensure the realistic look, great performance are usually achieve with images at 120Hz
Physical law simulation, this engine calculates the forces and provides haptic force feedback based on material properties to deliver a physical behavior, here to get great experience the target is to run at 1000Hz
Illustration of realistic simulations
“Realistic mission preparation & operator training”
“Review, simulate and interact”