On the scalability of visualization in manufacturing

Computer graphics plays an important role in modern engineering of manufacturing systems, both during design using virtual engineering environments and also as part of user interfaces to various machines. Existing and emerging systems today make use of software components, usually providing a graphical view to the user. In manufacturing, 3D graphics is desirable to visualize geometries of equipment and workpieces, sometimes also via small dedicated user interfaces. The established industrial technology does, however, neither scale down very well to such small platforms, nor scale up to safe operation of large systems. We put forward a notion of executable visualization and propose a solution based on the Java platform, using Java3D for 3D visualization in combination with VRML for external representation. Fully implemented prototypes including both real and virtual industrial robots, and industrial case studies, have verified the scalability which appears to be unique.