Bridging the Gap Between Reality and Virtual Reality
Automotive manufacturers are increasingly using virtual engineering to replace physical prototypes. Yet companies also have an extensive platform and component re-use strategy going from program to program. Augmented reality helps to marry these two systems, allowing a smoother operation overall.
Augmented reality enables users to show virtual data in the physical context. It is a powerful concept that will shape profoundly the automotive product development of the future. The Mawson Institute is constructing a revolutionarily new visualisation virtual environment to support a wide range of augmented reality visualisation tasks for manufacturing.
Imagine viewing a car, and instantly the colour of the paint changes or a spoiler is virtually added. Real-time wind flow simulation data is projected over an existing or partially complete vehicle. Professor Thomas and his team at the Wearable Computer Laboratory have been developing world leading augmented reality visualisation and user interface technologies for more than a decade. This new augmented reality visualisation laboratory will be the largest special purposed built laboratory in the world. The laboratory houses forty sets of projectors and computers with mounting systems, and supports up to six people working simultaneously.
Concept illustration of the augmented realityvisualisation laboratory |