Erasmus+ VLFT – Virtual Learning Factory Toolkit

ApertusVR is going to be used in Erasmus+ VLFT as a VR toolkit to visualize the factory. Students will be able to use a head-mounted-display and controllers to move around machines and product lines in the virtual reality 3D scene.

But what is VLFT?
As you can read on the original Facebook page:

The Virtual Learning Factory (VLF) Toolkit is a set of already existing digital tools and integrated into a common toolkit to support engineering courses dealing with manufacturing. The toolkit consists of two main components:

• VLF Digital Factory Framework
• VLF Tools integrated into a new VLF Toolkit with a user interface

The VLF Digital Factory Framework is a common and extensible data model for the representation of factory objects related to production systems, resources, processes and products. It mainly relies on existing and standards and regulations with the aim to guarantee effective applicability for the ranges of objects described.

The VLF Framework will be based on previous results by CNR-ITIA and POLIMI and will exploit already existing technical standards such as:

• Industry Foundation Classes (http://buildingsmart-tech.org/specifications/ifc-overview)
• STEP-NC (ISO 14649)
• UML Statechart (www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.2/Superstructure/PDF)
• W3C SSN/SOSA (https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-ssn/)

The VLF Digital Factory Framework will be continuously extended by adding concepts to the data model and by modeling academic use cases and industrial case studies during the project. The results of the modeling activities will be stored in the knowledge base to be used for future teaching and training purposes. In practical terms, the VLF Digital Factory Framework can be implemented adopting different technologies ranging from file-base solutions to relational databases and to native triple stores.