Date: Fri, 14 May 1993 10:22:26 EDT
From: jen7_ipa@venus.IPA.FhG.de
Subject: WHO: VR at Inst. for Mfg. Eng. and Automation, Fraunhofer, Germany


Hi Bob,
here some information about our institute.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (FhG) is the largest organization
responsible for institutions for applied research and development in
the Fereral Republic of Germany.The FhG maintains 45 research
institutes with a staff of around 7000, one third of which are
scientists and engineers. In terms of expenditures FhG activities
amount to more than DM 1000 Mio.

The "Inst.for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation"(IPA) with a
staff of more than 200 scientists and engineers is the largest
institute within the FhG. The annual turnover totals to DM 45 Mio.
85% stemming from private industry contract research.

Four main research areas characterize the IPA's activities:
 
	- production processes and surface technology
	- automation
	- corporate planning and control
	- quality engineering

Since its foundation in 1971 the IPA has acquired particular expertise
in the planning, design, and application of advanced automation with
emphasis on robot systems and peripheral devices for a wide range of
purposes.

To producing enterprises, the flexible production automation is of
special significance. Increasing use of industrial robots and auto-
mated plants from the main trend. In order to analyse the usability
and the advantages of Virtual Reality in this field is an examplary
fashion for industrial robots, institute internal Virtual Reality
techniques were used for the first time in 1991 at IPA Stuttgart.  At
first the commercial hardware and software components made by a
company in the USA were used for this purpose.
	
After it had turned out that this system could realize merely few of
the requirements in the field of automation, consequently the
development of an own Virtual Reality system was initiated. In Feb.
1992 the work led to the completion of a Virtual Reality workstation
which, besides the computer hardware and full software, consists of an
operating station and a real industrial robot.

By means of this workstation the operator can act in the virtual
world. Head and hand movements are registered and the real-time
included into the simulation. The computer generated images are
directly controlled by the operator's head movements and transferred
to the portable stereo display that enables him to perceive and
understand the simulated world in a stereoscopic way.  By means of a
6D-trackball the operator can move about in the virtual world without
the necessity to leave his real place. Via dataglove the operator's
hand movements can directly converted into path data for a virtual
robot. Thus any complicated path in all 6 DOF can be generated in
real-time. Conventional techpanels and extensive path programming of
the robot are redundant. The range of application for the system
covers the field of application planning of industrial robot
workcells, off-line programming of industrial robots and teleoperation
of robots.

The ready to use prototyp (VR4RobotS) was presented to the interested
public in the course of a press conference and at fairs such as CeBit
92/93, Hannover Fair 92 and CAT 92 in Stuttgart.  At present hard-and
software extensions are being carried out to widen the range of
application. The use of transputer technology facilitates the further
improvement in the performence of the System.

Since Jan.93 eist a Demonstration Centre for VR in which are 4
institutes are involved. Companies which are interested in VR have the
possibility to train their employees at the hardware and software of
the DemoCentre, available there are seminars, workshops and inhouse-
demonstrations.

chris