Immersive Tech Changes Product Creation and Purchasing
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Immersive technology will increasingly provide design engineers with the feeling of "presence" in a simulated and virtual world. While today’s virtual reality (VR) technology is already used in design and prototyping, it will eventually guide users down a complete path, alerting them to what's expected and what they may experience before making decisions, building, and even buying.
Immersive technology is just a part of an even bigger puzzle. When it comes to design thinking in product design, for example, the focus is on human needs to create a desirable, feasible, and viable end product. Taking design thinking and the concept of presence even further, using empathy enables designers to stand "in a user's shoes,” ultimately enhancing design and product quality, and empowering the complete creative process.
By harnessing the concepts of design thinking, empathy, and immersion, the result is storytelling that effectively and honestly communicates the precise way a product addresses a customer's needs. Now suppose we continue to approach immersive technology in this way. In that case, it will significantly impact product design and, as we will see, eventually be used to revamp human purchasing experiences.
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Our Current Reality
“Today, immersive design and simulation employ VR as a natural extension of computer-aided design and engineering. On the horizon, simulation and visualization powered by machine learning will take immersive design into the realm of science fiction, creating a foundation of engineering tools to propel the next generations of innovation,” says Simon Solotko, Senior Analyst at Tirias Research.
“We are seeing VR achieve high-resolution and precise visual control necessary to bring an engineer's entire day, their entire workspace, into VR. Every element, from initial design, to selecting components, evaluating functionality, and ultimately creating multi-component designs, is in the realm of the possible. We have sophisticated companies and teams pursuing this surprisingly coherent and common vision with a spectacular level of investment. Proof points for the power of these intersecting technologies now exist in virtually every industry, from medicine to energy to electronics,” Solotko added.
As Solotko notes, immersive technology currently reaches its tentacles into sectors impacting safety, efficiency, and businesses' bottom lines.
For example, the University of Liverpool's Virtual Engineering Centre has already helped support over 900 companies in adopting and developing immersive digital tools for business impact in nuclear, aerospace, energy, health, and the manufacturing sectors. The Centre’s haptic technology employs vibrations from tracked gloves that signal when two or more virtual entities come into virtual contact. The vibrations raise immersion levels above normal when only visual feedback is delivered to the user. This current technology is poised to be the basis of future, deeper immersion.
While VR creates a different environment, AR overlays images over the real world, interactively enabling virtual seeing and manipulating without having an actual model. VR/AR is 3D personified, and a user interface (UI) isn’t dependent on the tactile interaction of a mouse, touchpad, or touchscreen. Instead, the tactile interaction is mimicked.
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The impact on UI design will be that gestures, eye tracking, voice, controlled, and haptic technology take over. What will remain of traditional UI design is the critical component of visual design.
VR enables an open environment where actual product quality matches a rendered model, even when there is no room for error. As a result, design engineers see their models from different angles, which better provides the ability to refine and improve them.
Product Design and Testing
Virtual and augmented reality systems are currently incorporated into product design and development, the supply chain, and life cycle management. This begins at the conceptual stage and represents a new way of approaching, executing, testing, and producing a new design.
Once a virtual representation of a product that does not exist is created, designers and teams benefit in ways they would otherwise have been unable to. The ability to view to scale and see it in three dimensions is the first benefit. Even experienced mechanical engineers may not be able to determine the 3D version of a 2D drawing. The ability to zoom inside a part allows a more thorough examination of its interaction with adjacent parts. One mechanical example of this is how well a drive shaft couples to a gear and keyway. An electronics example is seeing how well a component's thermal relief area couples to a heat sink buried inside an otherwise not visible assembly.
The key here is that teams can be distributed globally, receive and share data in real-time, and have their own areas of expertise to contribute, while observing any possible concerns that may arise long before costly prototypes or parts are developed.
Thanks to material science, we can now work with a lot of new materials. The ability to virtually characterize and test these materials—which may be scarce or expensive—allows anyone to participate in a design that employs them.
Each component can carry attributes such as modulus of elasticity, melting point, sheer force limits, and compression limits. The simulated world can show stress points and danger zones for design iteration improvements. Assembly fits and frictions can be determined, and as 3D modeling and simulation tools improve, entire complex assemblies can be rendered virtually.
Not only can you see how components fit and interact at nominal conditions, but design teams everywhere can also view thermal simulations of friction, temperature rise, fit, and interferences as a gear heats up. This vision allows experimentation with different materials, all before a prototype part is ever fabricated. The time and expense saved are apparent. Whatever the case, access to the fundamental elements of a finished design is now available.
With the same data used as a source, distributed teams can work together, yet independently, anywhere around the world to verify and test, assure component placement and fit, and simulate worst-case stresses and failure modes. In addition, an empowered design team can raise concerns, even about things that are not in their area of expertise. Companies that have followed the Deming philosophy, a holistic approach to leadership and management, have discovered this.
The Prototype – Moving from Virtual to Physical
Once the details of mechanical parts are captured, prototypes may be fabricated using automated CNC techniques, 3D printing, or good old-fashioned handcraft. But, before costly molds and die tools are made for volume production, the thoroughly scrutinized virtual product would have to be put through the hoops mechanically and electrically to ensure readiness.
Often, electronics production is delayed until the mechanical constraints are known. You can't design a printed circuit board, for example, if you don't know its size or where the connectors need to poke through a chassis. As a result, mechanical designed constraints are typically defined first.
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When it comes to electronics, package spacing and heights can be assessed using immersive technology. Electro-physical issues can also be addressed. Component temperatures, heat flow and heat sink effectiveness, capacitor and inductor spacing, and alternate sourced components can all be verified. The alignment of an LED with an indicator or light pipe is beneficial when viewed as a 3D construct since 2D drawings don't always tell the best story, and not everybody can turn a 2D picture into a 3D mental image. This view effectively allows user interface testing, potentially eliminating costly iterations.
However, it is not just mechanical and electrical issues that immersive technologies will bring to the forefront. Electro-optics, electromechanical, electrochemical, and sensor technologies are also beneficiaries of virtual design.
While virtual technology mildly impacts disciplines like PCB design, cable harness manufacturing, documentation, and software engineering, it’s the system-level designers, engineering team leaders, and managers who get the streamlining benefits of this technology. Being responsible for all aspects of a design project is hard when you can't see it, feel it, or hold it in your hands.
Virtual technology will enable design managers to examine their designs in detail before committing to fabrication. This new reality can significantly streamline a project since costly iterations will decline if not be completely eliminated. The result is quicker time to market with lower costs and higher assurance at every stage.
As we integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into this technology, AR may also allow troubleshooting and maintenance at a much higher level. Zoomed ocular video streams, for example, can detect broken solder joints that a human eye could easily miss. AI learned performance can quickly identify common failure characteristics and quickly lead repair technicians to the problems. Thus, the virtual world can precede the natural world in creating higher-quality real-world items.
The Future of Purchasing: Mouser 3.0
As we begin to grasp the concept of design and development in the immersive world, it's also essential to think about a distributor's role. Think Mouser 3.0, for example. What will Mouser 3.0 look like as its designers continue to harness immersive technology? For one, there will be new rules of engagement, and one of the most exciting is product development and distribution in real-time.
Potentially, a user could visit the Mouser website and select different components to add to a design and test it. He or she could try various parts and see how they will work using an immersive environment. Perhaps, initially using goggles and vibration, the designer would "touch," "feel," and rotate the parts, while a Mouser expert assists in real-time.
Designers could scrutinize designs from a holistic point of view, enabling them to observe the future product in real-world settings. This not only saves time but also increases the overall quality of the end product. Using simulation tools will speed up innovation in engineering, reduce cost, and improve product quality, as we've discussed.
From concept to detail, Mouser could exponentially extend the partnership approach they already have today. As a result, engineers globally will work together and with Mouser as if they are in the same room.
When could this happen? Maybe sooner than we think. A next-generation design platform will support integration, shared data, and improved intelligence. Integration across design processes and disciplines optimizes resources to reduce development time and cost.
Challenges
While we may be closer than we think to immersive buying, designing, and producing, challenges remain to arrive at the customer interaction level of immersion that we seek. Just a few include:
- Improving basic web technology to sufficiently support both design engineering and e-commerce
- Optimizing stereoscopic vision and perception for individuals and teams
- Providing the user-friendly element of 2D and 3D visualization environments
- Providing sufficient immersive analytics that fully support e-commerce platforms
- Enabling adequate immersive comparison for this level of virtual shopping
There will be substantial advantages within manufacturing and supply chains beyond the digital prototype, including testing, streamlined processes, and the ability to truly bring virtual products to life.
According to Solotko, “The e-commerce of design components will evolve into this immersed workflow. Steps we take on the web today will need to integrate more seamlessly into the immersive, VR-powered engineering workflows of the future. This can extend through manufacturing, quality assurance, and ultimately customer support—with online integration and immersive environments extending to the service life on engineered products and systems."
Leaning Into a New Reality
As we examine our current reality in terms of AR and VR, it's clear we're on the brink of a new development experience. Engineers will be even more present in their designs, testing and touching in a virtual environment, and eventually even gaining access to physical production techniques that bring the virtual to life right before their eyes. In addition, as processes become more flexible and costs are reduced, the entire buying and building process will contain more room for innovations to come to life, further changing the way we live.