Virtual reality in collaborative product development processes

This article discusses possibilities for Virtual Reality (VR) in distributed concurrent engineering processes. VR can be the interdisciplinary communication platform where development partners integrate their design drafts and validate the overall system. Distributed VR-supported design meetings can help to reduce product development time and increase the stage of maturity of virtual prototypes. Besides available commercial solutions, current research activities in the field of distributed Virtual Reality are introduced. The "VR-Connect" solution allows the coupling of two full immersive Virtual Environments. The overall architecture of the system is introduced with an emphasis on the functionalities needed for distributed design review. One of them is the distributed interaction model that allows both partners to work on the design model simultaneously. It is necessary to avoid conflicts to keep a consistent synchronous model state while more than one user actively manipulates the data. An outlook shows the potential of Augmented Reality systems in distributed environments with possible application scenarios for the industry.