VR4CPPS - Virtual Reality for Cognitive Products and Production Systems

The automotive market is subject to a strong re-organization due to disruptive technologies such as electrification or autonomous driving. The vehicles are being more and more complex due to the increasing number of technologies to coordinate (e.g., hybrid powertrains with different energy sources), the increase in cognitivity (more comprehensive sensing of the vehicle and its environment for more accurate reaction of the system), and the increased connectivity (e.g., V2x, eHorizon) leading to an explosion of situation to consider. At the same time, the quality and availability expectations from the customer are rising, while product costs shall be maintained and the time to market reduced. The resulting expectations for the design and production of innovative powertrain systems as well as related test-beds and test-fields is huge. Especially the correct mapping of the testbed technology with the respective powertrain technology is challenging. Target of the VR4CPPS project (Virtual Reality for Cognitive Products and Production Systems) is to improve the development, production and operation of complex production systems and products by early integration of augmented and virtual reality along the entire product lifecycle, finally enabling: - Improvement of design quality and reduction of design efforts of complex products and production systems by improving cross-team collaboration, finally enabling (a) early customer involvement, (b) more accurate environment for design validation and design freeze, and (c) early optimization of the design toward production (e.g., DfM, DfA) - Improvement of production efficiency by (a) realistic training of the employees for new production line therefore reducing wastage at production start, and (b) support commissioning of the produced project by more accurate and interactive documentation - Reduction of after-sales efforts through the development of collaborative spaces targeting the efficient matching between experts and operators during operation and maintenance activities. The main innovation in VR4CPPS is driven by virtual reality (VR). Especially, the technology challenges are encompassing - Efficiency increase for the creation of digital twin using components created along the supply chain - Development of a distributed VR environment improving collaboration across skills, skill levels and across geographical locations - Enabling near-real time visualization of measurement results in VR, including visual interactive data analysis method, leading to an efficiency increase for handling complex data sets and for collaborative work. The complementary VR4CPPS consortium consists of an innovative automotive company and two research partners, finally being in the position to by highly innovative while at the same time knowing the industrial challenge and being capable of illustrating early path for exploitation.