Enhancing a robot-centric virtual reality system towards the simulation of fire

Today´s robot applications often include multi-robot multi-user environments which are planed thoroughly in 3D before installation. The key to gain the maximum benefit out of the already available models it is to reuse them for other purposes than only robot-simulation. One of these aspects surely is the training of future operators of the cell which is important especially for environments that are difficult to access for training. For example a production line in the automotive industry may not be shut down for a day of emergency-training. In this paper we will show how to reuse already modelled robot cells and mechanisms of the Cosimir simulation-system in emergency-training. We present an approach for graphical visualisation and simulation of fire. We show how to get realistic impressions of fire using advanced particle-simulation and how to use the advantages of particles to trigger states in a modified cellular automata used for the simulation of fire-behaviour. By this we can have a simulated fire developing and reacting on other fires and different substances as water, CO₂ or oxygen. It turns out that the mechanisms implemented for fire-simulation are also valuable for robot-simulation. So there is a mutual benefit between the robot-simulation and the simulation of fire. The methods proposed in this paper have been implemented and successfully tested on Cosimir, a commercial robot-and VR-simulation-system.