A Virtual Manufacturing Laboratory

Abstract

A virtual manufacturing laboratory is currently under development and will be in use by the summer of 1998. This laboratory allows students to access robots, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, DAQ (data acquisition) cards and other equipment using the Internet. A standard web browser is used to access the laboratory (www.aml.gvsu.edu). The student can then use virtual reality (VR) devices to explore the equipment. At present students can simulate programs on the virtual robot. When the student is satisfied that a program is functional, he/she can download it to the real robot, and monitor the robot with a video link. Students are also able to read and write to a data acquisition card to read/write analog data values. The hardware architecture of the laboratory uses a number of networked computers running Linux and Windows NT. Software has been written in C/C++ as well as Java to interface with equipment and web clients. VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) has been used for displaying the geometry of the devices.