In our VR research projects, we collaborate with strong partners from industry and academia to explore the best applications of spatial computing. With a focus on natural interaction and technical feasibility, we jointly develop new standards for VR interfaces. Our goal is to enrich people’s everyday work in cyberspace and support their creative endeavors. Experience what works and what really makes sense!
Today, manual work processes can only be taken into account in production planning with a great deal of effort. Old approaches are repeated (“we’ve always done it this way”) and optimization potentials remain unused. With our interactive, AI-supported process planning in VR, manual work is tested and optimized at an early stage.
As part of the XR-Crafting research project, we are looking at how the active transformation of everyday working life can succeed with the help of virtual reality. The aim of the project is to develop mixed reality software and an organizational process model that enables employees to transfer their work situation to the virtual environment as easily as possible. 3D point cloud scans are used to capture the real workstation and transfer it to the virtual world. The work processes are then captured by a camera system and also displayed in VR, where they can be edited and evaluated.
The use of robotics in industry changes the work for each individual worker. The role of humans in working with a robot therefore needs to be redefined. KoRA is a new tool from Halocline that enables feasibility testing of ideas around robot planning, even without prior robotics knowledge.
Together with our partners, we are designing a teaching-learning concept in VR that serves to develop and promote competencies in the field of collaborative robotics. In virtual reality, the work process can be experienced and designed separately from the real operational process, which enables the users to learn in a project-related and action-oriented manner.
Since the introduction of the new generation of VR headsets in 2015, the technology has established itself in everyday industrial use for planning and training production processes. The special feature of these solutions is above all the possibility of interactive testing.
Together with our partner, we are developing a software component to increase the realism of assembly activities in virtual reality. The goal is — using commercially available VR hardware — to adapt the interaction experience of the users to their dynamic behavior and the application context in a situation-adaptive manner.
The mapping of processes is often very complex with classic methods. A multitude of diagrams and descriptions make it difficult to maintain an overview. VR allows processes to be planned in context — i.e. situationally. This offers added value especially when the empirical knowledge of different disciplines is to be included.
Together with our partners, we develop VR tools and planning methods that can be used without specialized knowledge. The project is aimed at SMEs and supports them in the implementation of digitization measures.
Usability analyses of new production facilities in industrial manufacturing rarely take place during planning and usually without the practical experience of the actual operators. Subsequent changes require a lot of time and money and are only carried out in case of serious problems, so that ergonomic problems have to be accepted by the operators. The ErgoVR project is developing a digital virtual reality (VR) tool for ergonomic analysis of production workplaces to enable SMEs to perform ergonomic evaluations during the planning of new production facilities.
Arne Reepen
areepen@halocline.io
Krzysztof Izdebski
kizdebski@halocline.io