Image-assisted Collision Detection for Calculation of Assembly Interference Matrix

Abstract Assembly interference matrix is one of foundation information model for assembly process planning like assembly sequence planning and assembly path planning, which supports the digital assembly simulation, intelligent assembly, digital twins based assembly etc. Assemble interference matrix represents each two parts are collision or not when they moving along specific directions. Traditional assembly interference matrix construction adopts geometric collision detections on approximate swept volume of part which composed by moving part step by step. This manner not only leads to heavy computational loading since small moving step but also easy to misjudging contact as collide as well as missing collide due to discrete spatial moving of part. To overcome the drawbacks, this work equivalent the collision detection of parts during assembly interference matrix establishing as visibility judgement, and develop an image-assisted calculation method to process the collision between part’s swept volume as occlusion of images via computer graphic rendering. This method is implemented on OpenGL to ensure its generality, and the implicit calculating is finished in computer graphic rendering process by arranging proper rendering conditions with adopting depth testing and stencil testing. Furthermore, the erosion operation of image process is employed to distinguish whether contact or collide. At last, an examples for gear box assembly validates the effectiveness of this method.