An empirical study of an MR-enhanced kinematic prototyping approach for articulated products

In the conceptual design and early embodiment design stages, an effective kinematic prototype can assist in detecting design errors, minimizing unnecessary parameter modifications, and optimizing subsequent resource deployment. Existing methods for creating prototypes, such as 2D sketches, 3D modelling, or analysis software, have their advantages in precise modelling and simulation. However, there is a lack of an efficient approach that can achieve both rapid 3D kinematic idea generation and early on-site interactive verification. To address these challenges, this research proposes a Mixed Reality (MR)-enhanced kinematic prototyping approach for articulated products to enable the rapid generation of 3D kinematic concepts, movement preview, and early interactions with users or the actual workspace. The proposed approach facilitates the quick and rough construction of geometry and kinematic structures through intuitive hand gestures and interactive movement preview within the MR environment. The usability of the proposed approach was evaluated by a comparison experiment with traditional sketch and CAD tools involving eight participants. It is verified that our proposed MR kinematic prototyping system could accelerate the kinematic prototype generation process, improve the user's kinematic understanding, and facilitate on-site interactive verification in advance.