5 research outputs found
Peg-in-Hole Revisited: A Generic Force Model for Haptic Assembly
The development of a generic and effective force model for semi-automatic or
manual virtual assembly with haptic support is not a trivial task, especially
when the assembly constraints involve complex features of arbitrary shape. The
primary challenge lies in a proper formulation of the guidance forces and
torques that effectively assist the user in the exploration of the virtual
environment (VE), from repulsing collisions to attracting proper contact. The
secondary difficulty is that of efficient implementation that maintains the
standard 1 kHz haptic refresh rate. We propose a purely geometric model for an
artificial energy field that favors spatial relations leading to proper
assembly, differentiated to obtain forces and torques for general motions. The
energy function is expressed in terms of a cross-correlation of shape-dependent
affinity fields, precomputed offline separately for each object. We test the
effectiveness of the method using familiar peg-in-hole examples. We show that
the proposed technique unifies the two phases of free motion and precise
insertion into a single interaction mode and provides a generic model to
replace the ad hoc mating constraints or virtual fixtures, with no restrictive
assumption on the types of the involved assembly features.Comment: A shorter version was presented in ASME Computers and Information in
Engineering Conference (CIE'2014) (Best Paper Award
Haptic Assembly Using Skeletal Densities and Fourier Transforms
Haptic-assisted virtual assembly and prototyping has seen significant
attention over the past two decades. However, in spite of the appealing
prospects, its adoption has been slower than expected. We identify the main
roadblocks as the inherent geometric complexities faced when assembling objects
of arbitrary shape, and the computation time limitation imposed by the
notorious 1 kHz haptic refresh rate. We addressed the first problem in a recent
work by introducing a generic energy model for geometric guidance and
constraints between features of arbitrary shape. In the present work, we
address the second challenge by leveraging Fourier transforms to compute the
constraint forces and torques. Our new concept of 'geometric energy' field is
computed automatically from a cross-correlation of 'skeletal densities' in the
frequency domain, and serves as a generalization of the manually specified
virtual fixtures or heuristically identified mating constraints proposed in the
literature. The formulation of the energy field as a convolution enables
efficient computation using fast Fourier transforms (FFT) on the graphics
processing unit (GPU). We show that our method is effective for low-clearance
assembly of objects of arbitrary geometric and syntactic complexity.Comment: A shorter version was presented in ASME Computers and Information in
Engineering Conference (CIE'2015) (Best Paper Award
Haptic Assembly and Prototyping: An Expository Review
An important application of haptic technology to digital product development
is in virtual prototyping (VP), part of which deals with interactive planning,
simulation, and verification of assembly-related activities, collectively
called virtual assembly (VA). In spite of numerous research and development
efforts over the last two decades, the industrial adoption of haptic-assisted
VP/VA has been slower than expected. Putting hardware limitations aside, the
main roadblocks faced in software development can be traced to the lack of
effective and efficient computational models of haptic feedback. Such models
must 1) accommodate the inherent geometric complexities faced when assembling
objects of arbitrary shape; and 2) conform to the computation time limitation
imposed by the notorious frame rate requirements---namely, 1 kHz for haptic
feedback compared to the more manageable 30-60 Hz for graphic rendering. The
simultaneous fulfillment of these competing objectives is far from trivial.
This survey presents some of the conceptual and computational challenges and
opportunities as well as promising future directions in haptic-assisted VP/VA,
with a focus on haptic assembly from a geometric modeling and spatial reasoning
perspective. The main focus is on revisiting definitions and classifications of
different methods used to handle the constrained multibody simulation in
real-time, ranging from physics-based and geometry-based to hybrid and unified
approaches using a variety of auxiliary computational devices to specify,
impose, and solve assembly constraints. Particular attention is given to the
newly developed 'analytic methods' inherited from motion planning and protein
docking that have shown great promise as an alternative paradigm to the more
popular combinatorial methods.Comment: Technical Report, University of Connecticut, 201
Real-Time Topology Optimization in 3D via Deep Transfer Learning
The published literature on topology optimization has exploded over the last
two decades to include methods that use shape and topological derivatives or
evolutionary algorithms formulated on various geometric representations and
parametrizations. One of the key challenges of all these methods is the massive
computational cost associated with 3D topology optimization problems. We
introduce a transfer learning method based on a convolutional neural network
that (1) can handle high-resolution 3D design domains of various shapes and
topologies; (2) supports real-time design space explorations as the domain and
boundary conditions change; (3) requires a much smaller set of high-resolution
examples for the improvement of learning in a new task compared to traditional
deep learning networks; (4) is multiple orders of magnitude more efficient than
the established gradient-based methods, such as SIMP. We provide numerous 2D
and 3D examples to showcase the effectiveness and accuracy of our proposed
approach, including for design domains that are unseen to our source network,
as well as the generalization capabilities of the transfer learning-based
approach. Our experiments achieved an average binary accuracy of around 95% at
real-time prediction rates. These properties, in turn, suggest that the
proposed transfer-learning method may serve as the first practical underlying
framework for real-time 3D design exploration based on topology optimizatio
Equivalence Classes for Shape Synthesis of Moving Mechanical Parts
Moving parts in contact have been traditionally synthesized through specialized techniques that focus on completely specified nominal shapes. Given that the functionality does not completely constrain the geometry of any given part, the design process leads to arbitrarily specified portions of geometry, without providing support for systematic generation of alternative shapes satisfying identical or altered functionalities. Hence the design cycle of a product is forced to go into numerous and often redundant iterative stages that directly impact its e#ectiveness