Future directions for the development of Virtual Reality within an automotive manufacturer

Virtual Reality (VR) can reduce time and costs, and lead to increases in quality, in the development of a product. Given the pressure on car companies to reduce time-to-market and to continually improve quality, the automotive industry has championed the use of VR across a number of applications, including design, manufacturing, and training. This paper describes interviews with 11 engineers and employees of allied disciplines from an automotive manufacturer about their current physical and virtual properties and processes. The results guided a review of research findings and scientific advances from the academic literature, which formed the basis of recommendations for future developments of VR technologies and applications. These include: develop a greater range of virtual contexts; use multi-sensory simulation; address perceived differences between virtual and real cars; improve motion capture capabilities; implement networked 3D technology; and use VR for market research

Hybrid Simulators for Product Service-Systems : Innovation potential demonstrated on urban bike mobility

One major goal of the Rethinking Prototyping project is to bring scientists from different domains like engineering and arts to explore collaboratively new approaches of development and testing of Product Service Systems (PSS). PSS combine products, services, and infrastructure to fulfil individual customer needs. Therefore, the development of PSS is an extension of traditional engineering design process, which mainly refers to purely tangible products or intangible services into an integrated development process of products and services. The basis is a new technology called Smart Hybrid Prototyping (SHP), a joint development by Fraunhofer IPK and the TU Berlin. SHP is an innovative technology for a multimodal interdisciplinary evaluation of virtual prototypes in early development stages. It is based upon methods of Mixed Reality extended by modern industrial technologies to allow natural interaction with virtual prototypes of mechanical or mechatronic systems. It serves as a bridge between physical reality and digital virtuality. The use cases in this paper are based on urban bike mobility. Therefore, three concepts have been worked out to specify main requirements for an urban hybrid bike simulator. The first use case is from the perspective of a bicycle rental, where rental services for the users can be developed, validated, and optimized. The second use case provides the integration of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for the development and validation of mobile services for bicyclists. The third use case is oriented on development and validation of new bicycles and urban mobility concepts like e-bikes, pedelecs, tripelecs and sharing services. Based on these generic use cases the requirements on a hybrid bicycle simulator were derived. Why a bicycle simulator? Well, we are firmly convinced that the future of urban mobility is determined from trends such as ecological rethinking and the desire for sports and healthy life. Furthermore, it is one of the most competitive and agile markets using most innovative materials and manufacturing technologies

Digital sculpture : conceptually motivated sculptural models through the application of three-dimensional computer-aided design and additive fabrication technologies

Thesis (D. Tech.) - Central University of Technology, Free State, 200

Advances on Mechanics, Design Engineering and Manufacturing III

This open access book gathers contributions presented at the International Joint Conference on Mechanics, Design Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing (JCM 2020), held as a web conference on June 2–4, 2020. It reports on cutting-edge topics in product design and manufacturing, such as industrial methods for integrated product and process design; innovative design; and computer-aided design. Further topics covered include virtual simulation and reverse engineering; additive manufacturing; product manufacturing; engineering methods in medicine and education; representation techniques; and nautical, aeronautics and aerospace design and modeling. The book is organized into four main parts, reflecting the focus and primary themes of the conference. The contributions presented here not only provide researchers, engineers and experts in a range of industrial engineering subfields with extensive information to support their daily work; they are also intended to stimulate new research directions, advanced applications of the methods discussed and future interdisciplinary collaborations