Virtual Design

The research group focuses to basic and strategic research on issues close to design of mobile work machines. Our research ranges from methods and technologies of virtual design to novel applications and their impact on practical business use.

Increasing demands for functionality, safety and reliability in mobile machines set up high requirements for the control system of a mobile machine. Testing of a distributed control system with large amount of subsystems, devices, sensors and ever increasing amount of software is a challenging task. Using virtual testing as a part of the software development process increases the reliability of the machine and speeds up the development process. Hardware in the loop (HIL) –type virtual testing can also be exploited in the assembly phase of control centers of a machine resulting in a fully tested and reliable device.

The group has also a strong experience on modeling and simulation of fluid power systems and control of nonlinear systems. In the field of advanced actuator technology the focus of the group has been on pneumatic muscle actuators and electro-active polymers. 

Other direction of our interest is related to virtual design process, developing applications for immersive virtual environments (VEs) and studying user experience (UX) in this context. During the projects we have implemented applications such as a simulator of a mining machine. The main idea has been to bring a machine driver to a concept testing phase and perform this with simulator. We are also interested in issues such as participatory design and how occasional users can act in VEs.

We are located in both in Tampere Unversity Campus as well in Seinäjoki University Consortium. The research projects are conducted with private companies, other universities and research institutions, also international ones. We have close collaboration with other research groups and units, for example with Research Center for Information and Systems, University of Tampere.

Our team belongs to ViDIMS consortium which is in the second round of 2010 call for Centres of Excellence by Academy of Finland.