Glove-based virtual hand grasping for virtual mechanical assembly

Abstract

Purpose

Hand gesture-based interaction can provide far more intuitive, natural and immersive feelings for users to manipulate 3D objects for virtual assembly (VA). A mechanical assembly consists of mostly general-purpose machine elements or mechanical parts that can be defined into four types based on their geometric features and functionalities. For different types of machine elements, engineers formulate corresponding grasping gestures based on their domain knowledge or customs for ease of assembly. Therefore, this paper aims to support a virtual hand to assemble mechanical parts.

Design/methodology/approach

It proposes a novel glove-based virtual hand grasping approach for virtual mechanical assembly. The kinematic model of virtual hand is set up first by analyzing the hand structure and possible movements, and then four types of grasping gestures are defined with joint angles of fingers for connectors and three types of parts, respectively. The recognition of virtual hand grasping is developed based on collision detection and gesture matching. Moreover, stable grasping conditions are discussed.

Findings

A prototype system is designed and developed to implement the proposed approach. The case study on VA of a two-stage gear reducer demonstrates the functionality of the system. From the users’ feedback, it is found that more natural and stable hand grasping interaction for VA of mechanical parts can be achieved.

Originality/value

It proposes a novel glove-based virtual hand grasping approach for virtual mechanical assembly.

Citation

Li, J., Xu, Y., Ni, J. and Wang, Q. (2016), "Glove-based virtual hand grasping for virtual mechanical assembly", Assembly Automation, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 349-361. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-01-2016-002