Virtual reality and augmented reality in aircraft design and manufacturing

Summary form only given. The author is working on two research projects in Boeing Computer Services that have to do with virtual reality technology. The first involves importing aircraft CAD data into a VR environment. Applications include a side range of engineering and design activities, all of which involve being able to view and interact with the CAD geometry as if one were inside an actual physical mockup of the aircraft. He refers to the technology being explored in the second project as “Augmented Reality”. This entails the use of a see-through head-mounted display with an optical focal length of about 20 inches, along with VR-style position/orientation sensing system. The intended application area is in touch labor manufacturing: superimposing diagrams or text onto the surface of a workpiece and stabilizing it there on specific coordinates, so that the appropriate information needed by a factory worker for each step of a manufacturing or assembly operation appears on the surface of the workpiece as if it were painted there. The hardest technical problem for augmented reality is position tracking. Long-range head position/orientation sensing systems that can operate in factory environments are needed. This requirement and others give rise to some interesting computational problems, including wearer registration and position sensing using image processing