Adaptive and automated geometry preparation for ar/vr-applications in engineering

• Applicant: Professorin Dr.-Ing. Kristin Paetzold-Byhain
• Subject Area: Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 552526462

AR/VR applications can be used in a variety of ways in product development. The areas of application range from VR design reviews to inspections on real plants and training courses. Product geometry is an essential component of immersive and realistic visualizations. Polygon meshes are predominantly used for this purpose. These have to be generated by a data transformation from the analytically described CAD models. Especially mobile AR/VR applications, but also the representation of very complex technical systems are limited by the available computing power. This results in limitations in the possible detailing of products. The necessary geometry transformation and the optimization of the AR/VR application are mainly based on empirical values and are often iterative and time-consuming. This complicates the integration and efficient and productive use of AR/VR in product development and use. In movies and video games, texture mapping techniques such as normal maps are used for runtime optimization. This allows geometry details to be converted into textures which can be rendered with only minor losses in performance and detail. In engineering, Texture Mapping is hardly used due to the lack of automation and insufficient specialization of the methods. The proposed project focuses on the development of methods for geometry preparation for AR/VR applications that are tailored to the requirements. The adaptation and automated use of the promising approach of texture mapping is the focus of the project. The methods will be embedded in a concept for adaptive and automated geometry processing and realized in a demonstrator. The results of the project support an efficient and requirement-oriented preparation of AR/VR applications in engineering.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ralph Stelzer