Virtual Commissioning with Mixed Reality for Next-Generation Robot-Based Mechanical Component Testing

This paper presents a novel approach for robot-based mechanical component testing with a focus on how mixed reality can be used to improve this complex workflow. First we give a short overview of mechanical component testing and which benefits and challenges arise when using robots instead of classic testing actuators. We then explain in detail how mixed reality can be used during commissioning. Afterwards we give an overview of the software side of our approach by explaining the general architecture as well as showing various performance metrics. The main contributions in this paper are (1) a novel approach for combining mixed reality with robot-based mechanical component testing (2) a concept architecture for importing various data sources (like ROS oder Vicon data) into Unity and deployed to different mixed reality devices without requiring adaptation.