The objective of the project is to provide an interactive virtual and augmented reality case studies for problems related to courses in mechanical engineering ranging from statics to machine design and advance dynamics.
The current focus of the project is on rigid-body kinematics and kinetics. An important step to solve problems related to the rigid body motion is to correctly decompose a given system to its functional building blocks and sketch rigid-body diagrams. In order to address this, each problem is composed of two senses: a scene where the system of interest is depicted in a related environment; and an isolated scene where the system is isolated from the environment and decomposed to its functional blocks. Users can interact with the system through: switching between the scenes; manipulating forces and moments; changing system configuration and parameters. After each interaction, user could simulate the system to observe the response of the system. This simulation are implemented by solving differential equations that defines system dynamics. To finish each problem, user needs to read the problem description, follow the listed instructions and use interactive tools to solve and complete the problem objective. A group of related problems could be included in the same scene and a scoring system could be used to evaluate user’s progress.
