Previous research on Virtual Reality-based visualisation of customised products only consider geometry and appearance; the behaviour is seldom considered. Here we propose an approach to dynamically generate behavior-included Virtual Reality models for customised products.
First the customisation strategy and the behaviour programming strategy are discussed. Then a variant approach for dynamic generation of behaviour-included Virtual Reality model is described. Finally, the process to construct the Virtual Reality model template and to dynamically modify the template during run-time simulation is described.
"The capability that a 3D printer brings to us on scene saves the Marine Corps time and money by providing same-day replacements if needed. "It makes us faster than our peer adversaries because we can design whatever we need right when we need it, instead of ordering a replacement part and waiting for it to ship."
“As a commander, my most important commodity is time,” Although our supply personnel and logisticians do an outstanding job getting us parts, being able to rapidly make our own parts is a huge advantage.”
Marine Corps used the 3D printer as part of a process otherwise known as additive manufacturing. Without a 3D printing capability, an entire assembly would have needed to be replaced, a more expensive and more time-consuming repair. Rather than waiting weeks for a replacement the new part was printed, approved and installed within a few days.
The repair demonstrates the value that additive manufacturing technology brings to forward-deployed units. “I think 3D printing is definitely the future ― it’s absolutely the direction the Marine Corps needs to be going,”
The Marines aren't the only ones working on 3D printing. The Navy is using it to make submersibles, and the Air Force was looking at 3D printing to produce replacement parts.
But the Marine Corps has expressed particular interest in the technology and unit commands broad permission to use 3D printing to build parts for their equipment. The force now relies on it to make products that are too small for the conventional supply chain, like specialised tools, radio components, or items that would otherwise require larger, much more expensive repairs to replace.
Product customisation is one of most important enterprise goals must satisfy Marines requirements to offer reliable 3D product suitable for particular battalions. Product customisation is necessary to increase enterprise competitiveness.
Quality and costs goals create requirements to meet product configuration standards with well known product core and redesign of only chosen product components.
Product adaptation to the new application is a way of product development which assures product quality in regard to manufacture and fiscal determinants. Product planning needs information related to customer expectation and product characteristic enabled by Quality Function Deployment.
Problems arise in application of 3D technique supported decisions in early phase of product development so meeting Marines requirements is the most important task of product development in context of product customisation.
The link between Marines expectation and product characteristic is the crucial point in product planning. Marine needs are divided into two categories: revealed as related to product trade features satisfied in proportion like low price, fast delivery and products technical characteristics to include utility and functions.
The design problem includes, among others the problem of product decomposition where 3D configuration issue needs information related to product functions and components that implement the function. Product physical elements named components assembled together are accomplishing product functions.
Common solution is to present the visualisation just at the end of the configuration process, once the process has been finished. Better, however, is to present the user a continuous visual representation of the resulting product during the configuration process, guiding user through every single configuration step by an on-point visual representation of the recent state of specification.
Visualization is one of the strongest instruments to create trust and reduce the risk perceived of the user - and to increase the willingness to purchase. There are different ways of how visualisation can be technological implemented.
The presentation of pre produced pictures is a common and of course a good possibility to show the product linked to the configuration solutions. But also simple drafts are seen quite often. The big problem with this kind of visualisation is that each variation has to be produced in first. For offerings with a large number of variations this becomes very soon a problem and causes a lot of cost.
Compound Pictures visualisation involves pictures of the product a put together out of single components. Just like a box of bricks the product picture is set together out of the different pictures of components. This has the advantage that not all possible configurations have to be produced and only the visible parts must be indicated.
Rendered pictures is a more advanced way of producing a picture of a product and is some distance to the way of taking photos. Rendered pictures need vector graphics of the product or the components.
But these vector graphics don’t give a real product view. The surfaces first have to be coated by a texture and then are illuminated by the computer. A lot of advantages and possibilities are with technique convertible. Different views, colors, textures, illuminations can be shown without existing in the real world at all.
The most advanced technique of visualisation is building of 3D models. Although the structure is close to that of the rendered pictures the effort is much higher. The 3D models can normally be free rotated and sometimes even has some of the products functionality integrated.
The computing capacity and the complexity of the programmes you need to generate such models are very high and expensive. But it gives the customer the closest visual feeling of the real product. And the next step in visualisation is already on the way.
3D visualisations of system behaviour over time generally reailise benefits to include quick and easy ways to grasp overview of the quality of solutions. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. 3D visualisations of system behaviour within its Marines operational space make solution exploration even more tangible for developers.
Moreover, non-technical field-level Marines can much better assess if the system behaviour meets their requirements, when they can actually see the system behaviour compared to when they receive indirect feedback based on unrealistic tests.
Different scenarios can be visualised to clarify questions and evaluate possible solutions together with developers. Consequently, non-technical field-level Marines are more likely to contribute good feedback for further development.
So one big advantage of system behaviour visualisation is the reduction of possible misinterpretations and misunderstandings, which are caused by assumptions to cognitively map indirect feedback into system behaviour.
When visualisation is used together with Mission outcome simulations, flaws, which otherwise might only be determined when tests with real 3D prototypes are conducted, might be found considerable earlier. As a result, visualisation can also help to reduce system development costs and time-to-market.
Visualizations leverage the field-level Marines visual system to support the process of sensemaking, in which large information is collected, organised, and assessed to generate knowledge and inform action.
Even while most of our efforts to date focuses on the interaction between a single user and an interactive display, visual assessments are rarely solitary activities. Marines must share and communicate their findings.
In practice, making sense out of constraints is often a behaviour process involving parallel effort, discussion, and consensus building. So to fully support efforts to make sense of constraints, interactive visualisation should also support behavioural interaction.
However, the most appropriate collaboration mechanisms for supporting this interaction are not immediately clear. Here we present design considerations for disruptions in collaboration of visual assessments under field-level operational constraints, highlighting issues of parallel work, communication, and organisation of Marines units. These considerations provide a guide for the design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation systems.
Some groups of Marines may disagree on how to interpret visual representations contribute contextual knowledge that deepens understanding. As Marines build consensus or make decisions, they learn from their peers. Furthermore, some visual sets are so large that thorough exploration by a single Marine is unlikely.
In assigning critical Marines mission tasks, scenarios include possibility of multiple Marines in the field to form coalition decide not to cooperate with the rest, Removal of this coalition of Marines and their links might disconnect the network making it impossible for all Marines in the field to reach an agreement
Marines must solve gap between unconstrained/constrained consensus problems. An unconstrained consensus problem is simply the alignment problem while in distributed sequence of a function, the state of all has to more or less become equal meaning that the consensus problem is constrained.
Solving the constrained consensus problem is a cooperative task and requires willing participation of all Marines. Suppose a single group decides not to cooperate with the rest of participants and keep its state unchanged. Then, the overall task cannot be performed despite the fact that the rest of groups reach an agreement.
Physical space Marines are operating in exists within the virtual world represented by 3D navigational device. Transformation node at the top of the user space allow the user to position the user space anywhere in the virtual world.
In this representation user is always within the user position space and tracked with respect to the centre of the user space. Tracker values are assigned directly to transformation nodes to maintain correct position within the virtual world.
Product decomposition gives information about physical elements to be selected or designed to perform product function. Product functional decomposition should represent the intended behaviour of products and their parts.
Function of the assembly simulator is to support interactive constraint-based assembly/disassembly operations to support real-time simulation of physical constraints within the virtual space to provide realistic interaction between virtual assembly components.
Example of constraint specification and satisfaction problem involves alignment of a shaft with a cylindrical hole satisfying an axis-alignment constraint. Disassembly operations involve breaking the previously defined constraints by applying an external force.
Constrained rigid body motions of the assembly parts are used to support realistic manipulations of assemblies without breaking the existing assembly constraints by converting the 3D manipulation info from input device into allowable rigid body motions. Manipulation of an assembly model is not allowed if it is not supported by its allowable rigid body motion.
Once the assembly parts are loaded into the scene graph via design interface, attention to inputs allows the user to grab and manipulate objects in the 3D space. During this process, position of the moving object is sampled to identify new constraints between the manipulated/surrounding objects by the assembly simulator.
Such scenarios regularly arise in Marine network intelligence. Consequently, the design of visual technologies could benefit by considering behaviour interaction in addition to perceptual and mission critical processes. So the design of collaborative visualisation tools is a huge challenge.
Business visualisation is becoming increasingly important, Marine Leaders recognise the power of Marines visual intuition in information-rich decision tasks. Nevertheless, despite its promises, 3D visualisations are far less common than one would expect.
Here we describe a case study where we took a conventional visualisation of mission process as a starting point, for which we subsequently provided a 3D virtual reality visualisation. We introduce a small collection of 3D visualisation gadgets and associated behaviours,-- proved to be relatively complete for our case.
For each of these gadgets and behaviours, we discuss requirements and design trade-offs. The case study concerns an actual mission state process of the largest security provider, illustrating the usability of our gadgets and their associated behaviours, which include grouping, and drill down manipulation.
The cooperative behaviour aspects of visualisation has taken on new importance with the rise of modern Marine networks, enabling collaboration between participants acting in different battlespace locations and at different times.
This distributed, style of limited collaboration introduces new challenges for progress in visualisation modernisation. Most existing efforts to characterise collaborative visualisation has focused on coordinated cooperative scenarios-- with users working together at the same time to assess results or communicate the state of a battlefield.
Collocated collaboration usually involves shared displays, including large wall-sized screens and table-top devices. Systems supporting remote collaboration have primarily focused on coordinated interaction such as shared virtual workspaces and augmented reality systems that enable multiple users to interact concurrently with visualised operational directives.
Potential benefits of interactivity include changes of behaviour models, simulation parameters and system field-level scenarios during simulations facilitate an explorative solution development process and solution tuning. Developers do not have to wait for changes to take effect, for instance due to the compilation process and restart of simulations.
Instead, developers instantly see how the system behavior changes based on their modifications. So iterative, model-driven development process can be potentially performed more efficiently using interactive changes.
In contrast, relatively little attention has focused on how limited collaboration around visualisations affects mission outcomes. But by partitioning work across both time and space, limited collaboration may provide greater scalability for group-oriented missions.
There is evidence that, due in part to a greater division of labour, uncooperative decision making can result in higher-quality outcomes – broader discussions, more complete reports, and longer solutions – than face-to-face collaboration. One challenge to achieving the benefits of limited collaborative actions is determining the appropriate design decisions and technical mechanisms to enable effective collaboration around visual reality media.
Creating effective collaborative visual reality operational space raises a number of design questions. How should collaboration be structured, and what shared articles can be used to coordinate contributions? What are the most effective communication mechanisms?
To answer these questions, we envision future development projects of varying scopes. Marine leaders must focus on new visualisation and interaction techniques for supporting collaboration. Leaders must propose advanced mechanisms and ideally evaluate them through comparative study with other approaches. As listed above, new network communication models, pointing techniques, and story-telling interfaces are all candidates.
Future efforts into targeted techniques must be balanced with the design,, deployment, and evaluation of complete structural collaborative visual virtual reality space. Such systems will enable real-world groups to conduct collaborative virtual scenarios.
Studies of system usage can then measure the benefits of collaborative visual assessments in valid mission space settings and inform best practices for combining collaboration mechanisms.
A number of important experiments, such as those involving group directive organisation and incentives, may be best conducted in real-world settings and interfacing with the modern networks is critical to understanding how findings are disseminated and how collaborative virtual communications can be more deeply integrated into design of modern networks. These and other challenges present exciting opportunities for advancing visual system assessments.
We have presented design considerations for collaborative virtual reality systems, attempting to identify the aspects underlying successful collaboration and suggest mechanisms for achieving them.
Highlights include a list of collaborative virtual reality driven tasks and techniques to improve shared context and situational awareness level of field units, and suggestions for increasing engagement and allocating effort.
The overarching goal is to design behavioral/technical systems that improve our capabilities by promoting an effective division of troop tasks among participants, facilitating mutual understanding, and reducing the costs associated with collaborative tasks.
Visiting these considerations also provides an agenda for future research in collaborative virtual reality mission space to bring proposal to the surface of leadership attention and suggesting new technical mechanisms. For example:
1. Translate customer requirements into product specifications
2. Assist in quality product design based on product specification
3. Create optimal process design based on product design
4. Choose best process design based on product specifications
5. Translate product and process design into quality 3D item production
6. Define final test procedure and criteria to ensure product quality
7. Make cost projections based on customer requirements
8. Prepare cost projection based on customer specifications
9. Determine cost estimate based on product/process design
10. Predict final product cost based on operational priorities