A Virtual Environment for Collaborative Inspection in Additive Manufacturing
<|reference_start|>A Virtual Environment for Collaborative Inspection in Additive Manufacturing: Additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have been used to enhance the design and fabrication of complex components for various applications in the medical, aerospace, energy, and consumer products industries. A defining feature for many AM parts is the complex internal geometry enabled by the printing process. However, inspecting these internal structures requires volumetric imaging, i.e., X-ray CT, leading to the well-known challenge of visualizing complex 3D geometries using 2D desktop interfaces. Furthermore, existing tools are limited to single-user systems making it difficult to jointly discuss or share findings with a larger team, i.e., the designers, manufacturing experts, and evaluation team. In this work, we present a collaborative virtual reality (VR) for the exploration and inspection of AM parts. Geographically separated experts can virtually inspect and jointly discuss data. It also supports VR and non-VR users, who can be spectators in the VR environment. Various features for data exploration and inspection are developed and enhanced via real-time synchronization. We followed usability and interface verification guidelines using Nielsen's heuristics approach. Furthermore, we conducted exploratory and semi-structured interviews with domain experts to collect qualitative feedback. Results reveal potential benefits, applicability, and current limitations. The proposed collaborative VR environment provides a new basis and opens new research directions for virtual inspection and team collaboration in AM settings.<|reference_end|>
@article{chheang2024a,
    title={A Virtual Environment for Collaborative Inspection in Additive
  Manufacturing},
    author={Vuthea Chheang, Brian Thomas Weston, Robert William Cerda, Brian Au,
  Brian Giera, Peer-Timo Bremer, Haichao Miao},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.08940},
    year={2024},
    number={LLNL-PROC-859114},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2403.08940},
    primaryClass={cs.HC cs.DC}
}