One of the major advantages of virtual reality (VR) for business and enterprise use is how it enhances the collaborative process by allowing colleagues to work together despite being physically far distant. Car manufacturer Volkswagen are exploring this with the use of its new Digital Reality Hub.
Volkswagen have created a working group called the Digital Realities team, which encompasses twelve brands under the Volkswagen banner, including Skoda and Audi and 120 sites around the world. The aim of the group is to allow its members to exchange ideas and information in order to ensure the Volkswagen Group is moving in the right direction.
“Our aim is to ensure that employees, brands and sites are better networked by deploying the latest innovative developments,” says Digital Reality group leader Frank Jelich, “We therefore benefit from close cooperation between the best experts from the entire Group.”
The Digital Reality Hub combines several Group VR applications and tools into one platform. The hub allows real locations, such as factory production lines, to be created 1:1 in the virtual environment. The Digital Reality hub allows for efficiency savings by allowing designers and engineers to trial optimisation measures. It also saves time and money that would otherwise be spent in time consuming and expensive site visits.
Mathias Synowski, VR user from Group Logistics, adds: “We can take part in workshops at other sites virtually or get support from experts from other brands virtually when implementing optimizations. It makes it much easier to work as a team every day and saves us a lot of time.”
Heike Münstermann from the Strategy and Factory Concepts division works on overseeing the introduction of the technology developed by the Digital working group into series production. She says VR and AR are becoming increasingly important is business: “Virtual reality and augmented reality will have a huge impact on how we work in the future, and as such there will be new health issues for us to consider. The systems for assessing physical and psychological stress need to be further developed for these applications. The cognitive processing of innovative technology also needs to be assessed.”
VRFocus will continue to report on new developments in VR for industry use.