Latest HoloLens News: Ford Utilizing ‘HoloLens’ To Alter Design Process

Ford Motor Company has invested the previous year pilot analyzing a cutting edge part of Microsoft hardware to speed up the process of designing new automobiles and trucks, and to unlock more possible for sharing and collaborating in real time. The hardware — a powerful “mixed reality” headset called “HoloLens” — is currently prepared to be deployed by Ford design teams throughout the world and made an official part of the automaker’s validation process.

What’s “Mixed Reality”?

“Mixed reality” is a technology that makes a hybridized fact by combining objects real and virtual, where matters from both realms can socialize in real time.

If this sounds a bit overly sci-fi, let us break it down. Mixed reality consists of 2 components: “augmented reality”, and a thing called “augmented virtuality”. Augmented reality that you may already be familiar with if you’ve played Pokemon Go; it’s a technology which superimposes computer-rendered objects over real-world visuals, creating a composite view for the consumer. Augmented virtuality takes that mix perspective a step further, letting real life objects to be integrated into the digital world. For our purposes, you can feel free to consider this “fortified reality-plus”.

Microsoft’s HoloLens combined fact hardware is a headset which suspends a pair of translucent display screens before the user’s eyes, onto which virtual objects are all rendered in 3D. A pair of speakers sits above the ears to get audio integration, and the headset is really capable of exact mind tracking and gesture recognition using integrated cameras and other detectors. Best of all, it’s truly portable, with all the essential calculating being done from the headphone (powered by Windows 10), without any external cables or detectors required.

How It Helps Speed Up Vehicle Design

Imagine a world where automakers do not need to use the antiquated process of modeling designs from clay to feel their ideas.

Ford is not there yet; no large automaker is. However, Microsoft’s HoloLens combined fact headset performs a similar role to clay versions, enabling Ford to explore different design features from a “customer perspective,” inside a real-world space. New automobile fascias could be modeled using computer applications, mapped onto an present automobile or clay version; distinct variations could be hammered, and scrolled through and analyzed by numerous staff members.

In a press release, Ford employs the example of grille designs; in which now, it can take days or months to study a single, HoloLens enables engineers and designers to experience several iterations in only hours. It isn’t only exterior features, possibly; entire vehicle interiors can be rendered and researched to ensure proper ergonomics and visibility.

With the magic of the world wide web, a designer at North America could sit in the drivers seat of the digital cockpit joined by a colleague at Australia, India, or anyplace around the globe from the passengers seat; engineers and designers throughout the world can study the exact same design collectively, in real life.

Technological Progress

In reality, Ford has been using some form of mixed or augmented reality in product development for a while. Considering that 2014, “immersive” reviews of manufacturing vehicles using similar technologies are a requirement any time the automaker was planning a change the customer could see. Several years before, in 2004, Ford Virtual Reality and Advanced Visualization Tech Specialist Elizabeth Baron claims the automaker ran virtual testing of this first-generation Ford GT supercar using whatever relatively crude hardware and applications were also available.

That system utilized magnetic tracking, meaning when Ford constructed a cockpit for farming simulation, they could not utilize any material. So, they had it built from mahogany.

“HoloLens enables a complete team of folks to collaborate, share and expertise ideas collectively,” Ms. Baron claims of the company’s most recent virtualization hardware. “Mixing virtual and physical versions is enjoyable, since it helps our engineers and designers communicate effectively and ideate to see what the future resembles sooner in the process. This permits excellent freedom and efficacy of how prototypes are made or altered.”