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Ford, Where Virtual Reality Is Already Manufacturing Reality

This article is more than 9 years old.

When Facebook announced its $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR in March, founder Mark Zuckerberg talked of applying virtual reality in different industries. A heated debated was sparked as to whether businesses could really use the technology to good effect.

Car manufacturer Ford has a clear answer to that question: yes, it can revolutionize development.

Across industries, experts have commented that virtual reality technology has great potential but many businesses are not maximizing it . VR allows for companies to test scenarios and designs, and experience products before they are even made.

Ford Motor Company, based in Dearborn, Michigan, has been using virtual reality technology to various degrees to develop its designs since the year 2000. But in the last seven years, the 111-year old business has made virtual reality central to its automotive development, using the Oculus Rift headset technology.

"What we're looking for is the perceived quality of vehicles, as a customer would see them," Elizabeth Baron, virtual reality and advanced visualization technical specialist at the company, tells Forbes. "We want to be able to see the cars and our designs, and experience them before we have actually produced them."

Watch Ford's virtual reality technology in action in this video

Ford's Immersion Lab allows for exactly that. At the advanced facility, different employees can don a virtual reality headset, and walk around looking at a car, while colleagues watch what they experience on a large screen. They can also sit in the car, often a preferred option given that walking around with a VR headset can be disorientating.

"We've built a large room where we can experience the 'car', and it includes huge power wall, with a 15ft x9ft screen displaying at 4K resolution,” Baron says. “We don't want our colleagues to miss anything!"

In a typical meeting, lasting anything between half an hour or several hours in total, 30 to 40 people from design and engineering departments might attend specific segments. Executives from around the world also connect via video.

Ford uses the technology to examine the entire exterior and interior of a car design, as well as to drill right down to how a particular element looks, such as a dashboard or upholstery. The VR technology links right into its Autodesk computer aided design (CAD) system.

Much of the observation involves specific details, such as light positioning, size or brightness, and the positioning or shape of individual design elements. Last year alone, Ford examined more than 135,000 details, on 193 virtual vehicle prototypes, using the technology.

"The way that people perceive things can be very subtle,” Baron notes, “so we take a virtual look at the car in very different conditions, simulating bright daylight or a cloudy day, and night time, to see how it would look."

The company's technical design process normally begins with simple sketches, which are developed into complex designs, involving highly specialized engineering. Virtual reality can be brought in at any stage to test an idea.

Ford uses the very technology that has been extensively talked about in recent weeks: Oculus VR. These headsets have become the center of attention after Facebook acquired the company, in a bid to improve the ways it allows people and businesses to communicate and share experiences. [In separate news this week, Oculus VR is facing claims from ZeniMax, a game development firm that says Oculus stole the technology for its headset]

Baron encourages other industries to look at the benefits of virtual reality technology. Adoption still has a long way to go, she notes.

Elizabeth Baron, VR and advanced visualization technical specialist at Ford

"Let's be honest, the virtual reality community in business is still pretty small,” she says. “But I always enjoy engaging with people in other industries, everything ranging from agriculture to defense, so we can share ideas about how we use the technology and what the future holds." Baron also regularly engages with the vendors involved to help inform their development from an industry perspective.

Virtual reality has a strong future at Ford. The company has a similar facility in Melbourne, Australia, and is looking at further developing similar sites in Germany, China, India and Brazil.

“We use VR to solve quandaries and test design so much earlier in the process now,” Baron concludes. “It’s absolutely fundamental to getting things right and really collaborating well.”

As virtual reality technology continues to be improved, so that it better links together the virtual and physical experiences, the opportunities to drive improvement are immense.

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