Research of a Mixed Reality methodology for test case generation for the virtual commissioning of production systems - MiTeVi

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Sascha Röck; Professor Dr.-Ing. Alexander Verl
• Subject Area: Production Automation and Assembly Technology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563998230

Due to the growing degree of automation and complexity of production systems, the time and costs involved in the mechatronic development process and the commissioning of production systems are rising sharply. Computer-aided virtual commissioning tools using X-in-the-loop simulations, in which 3D simulations of production systems are coupled with control systems to detect errors at an early stage and to parallelize development steps, are increasingly being used to meet these requirements. However, generating the start and end conditions for the test cases in virtual commissioning using abstracted control and control panel commands proves to be very complex and time-consuming. In addition, certain test cases can currently only be carried out during the commissioning of the real system, such as manual insertion and removal processes for workpieces. In addition, larger production systems often work with different control systems, so that a correspondingly large number of modeled control elements are required to influence the simulation. As a result, test creation is usually very time-consuming and can only be carried out by experts. To overcome these obstacles, this project will research test case generation using mixed reality (MR) methods. In order to avoid time-consuming remodeling of components of the production system (e.g. HMI - Human Machine Interface) and to address the sensitive perception of humans, a new MR method for test case generation, the so-called augmented virtuality method, will be researched (subproject Röck). In this method, critical interaction elements, such as the user’s hands and the HMI of a production system, are integrated as real objects into a computer-generated environment. These new MR interactions have to be integrated into test case generation in a way that extensive test cases, which were previously only possible during commissioning of the real system, can already be validated in the virtual commissioning (subproject Verl). For this purpose, existing Computer Aided Software Testing (CAST) methods are extended by newly defined test cases. To reduce the effort of manual test generation despite high test variance, test case generation and randomization of test cases based on user input in MR will be investigated.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants