VR Based Simulation for education (V-Machina)

Integration of VR-based simulation for the safe interaction and practice of students and workers with machinery and robots

Manufacturing machinery is mostly large, complex, made of many parts and difficult to operate or relocate, while also requiring regular and prompt maintenance to perform its function.

We aim to improve the situation by creating digital twins of selected machinery within a shared virtual environment that:

• allows students and practitioners (but also technicians and end-users) from all around the globe to interact and manipulate the machine for collaborative training, assistance or product demonstrations;
• enables new pedagogical material to be integrated in the learning paths of the EIT Manufacturing Guided Learning Platform;
• adopts more realistic avatars by directly scanning the user body;
• simplifies the link between real and virtual machinery by interfacing the sensors on the real machine with its virtual representation.

This activity builds on and further extends the Virtual Manufacturing Environment (VME) platform developed within the previous year’s V-Machina project.

Project consortium:

• CEA
• EIT Manufacturing ASBL
• Light & Shadows
• University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland