TechViz - Blog - AR / VR for engineering

Immersive technologies play a crucial role in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry worldwide. According to a report from Statista, the market for augmented and virtual technology in medicine and pharma will grow by $4.64 million by 2025 thanks to many advancements in the healthcare industry in recent years.

This article is the 2021 edition of a regular review the TechViz team carries out to help you navigate the market. There are indeed many types of XR headsets around: tethered, all-in-one, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality… This can sometimes be confusing, especially because every manufacturer uses its own terminology to boast the uniqueness of its technology.

For years, maintenance has been perceived as critical to the productivity performance, but treated as an afterthought during the development phase and as a pain point in the operation phase.

Maintainability had unmet needs that were hard to address with traditional development and production techniques. Yet, with the cost of service being built into the ownership model of an ever-larger number of products, companies are increasingly paying attention to ensure easy and efficient maintainability. The rise of new technologies, such as the Virtual and Augmented Realities (VR /AR), the Internet of Things (IoT) associated with Artificial Intelligence are changing dramatically the way it is addressed.

For machine tool manufacturers, Virtual Reality offers many important opportunities. Indeed, an increasing number of their customers have embraced the Smart Factory concept, in other words the use of advanced CAD systems as well as data-driven manufacturing. With this, the core of the tooling industry has shifted from simple machining technology to more sophisticated and advanced horizontal / vertical machining centers, Computer Numerical Control and multitasking part processing, making it an increasingly complex environment that Virtual Reality can help navigate.

In 2080, one third of the European population will be 65 or older. For smart factories through the path of the Industry 4.0, it means having a “good” workplace is not enough, and its design should anticipate the preservation of the operator’s wellbeing. Therefore, the working environment for modern manufacturing workplaces must allow for the best productivity and quality outputs, while offering a secure environment for the workers.

Have you seen 2020’s Hype Cycle for Emerging technologies from Gartner?

Notice anything? Take some time to look at all the emerging technologies. Isn’t there something missing? Where is Virtual Reality? In a world where social distances and virtual collaboration has become essential to many industries, how come a technology like VR vanish from the Gartner Hype Cycle?

As manufacturing grew more complex, the need to find and fix errors before production has become crucial, hence the need for design reviews. But let’s be realistic a moment: if it happens with the 3D model of an airplane or a manufacturing plant, good luck finding it! This is where Virtual Reality (VR) intervenes (and especially VR collaboration). VR design review enables you to be immersed in your 3D data, see your product at full-scale and simulate its operation.

A few years ago, there was a lot of hype around Virtual Reality. 2016 was supposed to be the big breakthrough year, then 2017, then 2018… There were talk about VR being the next entertainment/work platform, just like Radio, TV, Computers, Phone were. But it never actually materialized. Hyperbolic growth numbers did not happen as promised. Many VR companies have come and gone and a lot of projects, including from Silicon Valley big names, have been scaled down. Companies promising massive customer deployment have pivoted into niche professional use cases.

The automotive industry is a fast-paced sector which continuously adopts technologies that powers their digital transformation. Virtual Reality (VR) is one of the most fitting technology to provide the automotive sector with new methods and tools to design better vehicles, test different configurations, check driving ergonomics, refine manufacturing processes, etc.

There are several VR headsets types on the market, but the ones that are the most suited for vr engineering are PC-powered headsets because they rely on a powerfull system. Depending on your use case and the scale of your project, you can tailor your system to your needs in terms of processing power, screen resolution, storage, and so on.