Since March 29, 2017, Scarabée d'Or, one of two Citroën vehicles that survived the first crossing of the Sahara in 1922, has been back on the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers Cluny until May 11. The goal for this second stop is to scan Scarabée d'Or with a laser scanner. From the bodywork to the small parts, theInstitut Image team and students from the Master's in 3D Interactive Technologies Management (MTI3D) program are working together to create a virtual clone. This digital double will be used for educational purposes and will enable progress to be made in the manufacturing chain of its real double, which will be presented during Citroën's 100th anniversary celebrations.
See you in 2019
As part of Citroën's 100th anniversary celebrations in 2019, the Des Voitures & des Hommes association aims to build an identical replica of the Citroën B2 (model K1) half-track vehicle, known as the Scarabée d'Or , which, along with four other vehicles, made the first crossing of the Sahara in 1922. To achieve this, the association called on Arts et Métiers, a leading technological institution, and its Cluny campus, as well as the Château d'Épluches vocational school for automotive and transport trades (95 Saint Ouen l'Aumône). The former is responsible for the mechanics of the tracks, the latter for the bodywork.
A virtual clone of the caterpillar track
The idea for this second visit to the Cluny workshops is to create a virtual clone of the vehicle. Jean-Rémy Chardonnet, Senior Lecturer and coordinator of the Master's in 3D Interactive Technologies Management (MTI3D), and two Master's 1 students combed through the parts and bodywork of the half-track using a laser scanner. As part of their project, the two students, Axel Houot and Elio Khouri, are tasked with creating a working virtual reality demonstrator. In other words, an application in which a virtual clone of the Scarabée d'Or will be immersed in a virtual environment. A journey through time where the Scarabée d'Or will find itself in the Sahara in 1922. Finally, like a project review in aeronautics, the vehicle's mechanism can be animated, dissected, and projected from new angles.
Different types of laser scanners
The Image Institute team uses two types of laser scanners. The first, which is small, is used to scan small mechanical parts. It is also used in the field of reconstructive surgery. The second, which is larger, has a greater range. The car body was scanned by the laser scanner and transformed into a cloud of digital points, which, once assembled, will form the skeleton of the virtual clone. This laser scanner has already been used to digitize the buildings of Cluny Abbey as part of its 1100th anniversary celebrations in 2010. More recently, it helped to duplicate a Romanesque portal at Chalon-sur-Saône Cathedral. Finally, it was used to digitize the east gallery of the Cluny cloister so that engineering students could virtually recreate the conscripts' hall, the new venue for the grand gala to be held on June 10, 2017.
A renovation focused on training
The Des Voitures & des Hommes association can count on engineering students and those studying for a Master's degree inArts et Métiers. In fact, a total of no fewer than fifty second-year students have been involved in this ambitious project. So far, they have successfully completed several stages: dismantling, taking measurements with traditional and digital instruments such as laser scanners and CAD modeling. The difficulty lies in the fact that there were no paper plans for the parts. As the vehicle plans had been destroyed, the engineering students returned to an old entrance exam test that involved sketching technical parts using wash techniques. The project will continue with engineering students from Cluny, as well as from theAngers and Metz campuses. Three campuses and one institute—that of Chalon-sur-Saône—are mobilized to complete this project on time. ENISEin Saint-Étienne will also be called upon to cut the pinions. The Scarabée d'Or project will enable the Château d'Épluches vocational school for automotive and transportation trades to open a complementary teaching module on the maintenance and restoration of historic vehicles.
