Daimler-Benz virtual reality competence centre in Ulm

Munich, 14-10 -1996 In September Daimler-Benz opened a Virtual Reality Competence Centre at its research centre in Ulm. Virtual reality has been recognised as a key technology for product development. With the combination of CAD/CAE and virtual reality you can can "Look at, inspect, fly and sell an airplane before the first screw has been ordered." explained Dr. Fligge of DASA

The virtual reality competence centre is equipped with three-channel 200 degree projection (SGI InfiniteReality), Head Mounted Displays (n-vision), Boom (fakespace) and all the well known interaction tools and displays. It is a focal point in VR-technology and applications in the Daimler-Benz group.

As a service centre the group supports r&d groups and identifies and outsources the VR software tools that can be sold on the market. The centre will, however, not act as a software house.

Dr. Franz May demonstrated the steps in the VR process using a car design example. You start with a CAD grid model of a Mercedes-Benz car with 600 000 triangles, building a rendering model of the car using Gouraud shading. In the next step , highlight lining using reflection and texture mapping gives the impression of a real car.

According to May, some application areas of VR include high-quality visualisation in the design process, a virtual showroom and sales office for cars, ergonomic research and design of an operator station and the man-machine-interface for digital mock-ups. Also included are driving and flight simulation and telemanipulation of robots in space.

Plans for new areas include visualisation of results of simulation runs, such as flow on the outside or inside of a car or crash simulation. The planning and optimisation of production plants - the virtual factory - is a current research goal.

The virtual showroom is very impressive: walk into a showroom of Mercedes-Benz, look at the cars, change the colour and choose the right one, add some extra's to the car and see how it looks. You can get into the car , check out the instrumentation and sit in the drivers plae All in all, you have the feeling of how you new car will look and feel.

The Daimler-Benz Virtual-Reality Working place DB-ViRA

Dr. Franz Klimetzek showed the results of a numerical simulation run on the thermo-physiological climate and air flow in a car and the influence this has on passengers. The numerical simulation is done on HPC systems using STAR-CD to compute flow and temperature distribution. The large amount of generated 3-D data requires interpretation by specialists using conventional output media such as video, which takes a lot of time.

A well-known constraint is the use of 2-D displays for geometrically complex 3-D bodies. In this way not all information contained in the simulation is used. In a cooperation with GMD, Daimler-Benz Research has developed a working place that is based on virtual reality. It allows stereoscopic visualisation and interactive interpretation of simulation results but also of measured data.

By means of a projection table the inspected part, which could be,the interior of a car, is presented as a "real" 3-D image. This is done with stereo projection that shows the picture alternating for the right and the left eye. By using shutter-spectacles the picture can be seen in 3-D by a small group of engineers. Using a marking pin one can switch on the flow in the passengers cabin and see weightless bubbles or particles streaming around the drivers head or feet. This allows a detailed inspection of the behaviour of the 3-D-flow, or of 3-D-planes that are defined by the engineer.

Using these techniques, the engineers saw that the flow around the drivers feet did not behave as expected. It is quite a funny feeling when you put your own head into the drivers virtual head and see the air flow around your own head. Some of the advantages of this virtual workplace are that even inexperienced engineers can interpret simulation results; Others are:

there are no physical discomforts as with the head-mounted displays;

you do not live in a virtual world;

if you look at your colleagues, you see them in reality

it's easy to look into details;

looks like a normal working place;

good for small group of engineers (up to 4 or 5);

can improve the cooperation between different disciplines.

Currently, the VR workplace is off-line in the design process. The simulated data - a large amount - has to be transferred to the workstation of the workplace before it can be processed. The next step planned by the centre , is to have an interactive simulation. In a "numerical test stand" the engineer can integrate the results of the analysis directly into the next simulation. He can modify the temperature of the flow in the cabin or the location of the air intake and see the influence on air flow immediately.

This approach solves the problem of the huge amount of data that has to be stored today. Only the final configuration has to be saved for documentation purpose. This approach requires HPC computing power in the background with extremely fast networks.

Dr. Klimetzek estimates the cost of the whole system in the range of 100 000 DM (about 56 000 Ecu). He now offers services to the Daimler-Benz group, to rent the working place with experienced personnel and demonstrate all the possibilities of rotation, zooming and deletion of parts , as would take place in a detailed examination. The system is able to read the output data from different CAE-programs. This is a major step in the direction of ' look and feel' in the design process.

Uwe Harms