Disassembly Task Evaluation in Virtual Reality Environment

The influence of virtual reality (VR) on human behavior with using biomechanical analysis methods and its application for assembly/disassembly operations simulation is presented in this paper. A new haptic model for mechanical energy expenditure is proposed where the required mechanical work is used as main parameter. The fatigue levels are evaluated by analyzing the recorded electromyography (EMG) signals on the most involved muscles of operator’s arm. A set of experimental disassembly tests realized in a VR environment are performed thus allowing to validate the proposed method. The comparison of the analytical and experimental results has shown good correlation between them. The proposed method provides the feasibility to integrate human muscle fatigue into disassembly sequence evaluation via mechanical energy expenditure when performing disassembly operation simulations in the initial stage of product design.