Pierre M. Larochelle
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Florida Institute of Technology
Melbourne, FL
Judy M. Vance
John Kihonge
Virtual Reality Applications Center
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011-2160
ASME Journal of Computing and Information Sciences in Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 3, September, 2002, pp. 208-215.
Abstract
This paper presents a framework for generating and interacting with the line congruences associated with four general ?nite poses. These line congruences are the solution space of spatial 4C mechanisms which will guide a workpiece through the four prescribed poses. Hence, the contributions of this paper are applicable to developing interactive tools for designing spatial 4C mechanisms for four pose motion generation. First, a methodology for generating a parameterized representation of the line congruences is reviewed. This is followed by strategies for visually representing the line congruences which are appropriate for both workstation and immersive virtual reality computer graphics. Next, strategies and supporting algorithms for interacting with the line congruences to obtain solution mechanisms with ?xed links or coupler links in desired regions of the workspace are presented. The result is an intuitive interactive visual design methodology for generating and interacting with the line congruences associated with four general ?nite spatial poses. Our hope is that this tool will in turn facilitate the creation of both virtual reality and workstation-based computer-aided design software for spatial 4C mechanism design.
