Towards Semantic Virtual Prototypes for the Automatic Model Combination

This chapter presents an approach for the automatic combination of different models in order to build-up a virtual prototype automatically. Semantic Web techniques are used for that purpose; aim of the work has been to verify if Semantic Web techniques are suitable for that purpose. Therefore, the models that need to be combined become semantically annotated. The items of 3D models and multi-body systems are presented, which need to be annotated in order to facilitate an automatic combination of these two types of models. To combine them the relations between both models need to be identified. A reasoning mechanism is presented that indentifies these relations. The automatic combination of models simplifies the build-up of virtual prototypes. In future, it facilitates complex virtual prototypes that consist of multiple models. Due to the addition of a semantic to the models, the virtual prototype is denoted as Semantic Virtual Prototype.