Virtual Technologies as Engines of Growth
German economic growth increasingly depends on the speed with which innovative product developments are launched on the market. What is more, customers are demanding ever more customized demands on products but are unwilling to pay higher prices for them. In order to be able to survive international competition, German enterprises are banking increasingly on virtual technologies because computerize product development opens considerable potentials for savings. However, commercially available software products reach their limits when it comes to realistic representation, processing larger amounts of data, natural interaction in virtual environments, real-time compatible simulation and suitable input devices. Thus, a complete virtual representation of a complex product or an entire factory is impossible.
 
Therefore, a consortium of leading German industrial companies, small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and well-known research organizations has set itself the goal of developing and testing efficient virtual and augmented reality technologies in the AVILUS technology network. This project is the mainstay of the Virtual Technologies Innovation Alliance. Twenty-eight highly successful partners from key German industries such as the automotive, aircraft, shipbuilding and plant manufacturing industries represent all the fields of expertise necessary for the success of the project so that the entire process from product development to manufacturing up through marketing and maintenance is covered with resource efficiency.
 
Virtual Technologies Focused on Specific Users
The project is squarely focused on people. Virtual technologies will integrate them in all of product development and enable them to make decisions in different stages of development in considerably faster and more reliably. Developers will already be able to assume the role of later users or consumers at an early stage to evaluate the function of a virtual product and optimize it where necessary. The completion of more complex tasks requires being able to experience and operate a virtual product and its environment as realistically as possible. Users will be able to intuitively act in a scene, e.g. a car interior or an aircraft cabin, and operate the appropriate equipment.
 
More effective utilization of digital information supporting products and manufacturing holds another economic potential. To this end, a information management system shall be developed, which maps the entire life cycle of a product or production equipment and combines and processes all data from development to disposal and provides it to other users and applications. 
 
Technology Development
Technologies for information management, digital information-supported manufacturing, virtual information presentation, tracking-systems, visualization systems (renderers), mobile information recording and display equipment and information generation and processing (engineering and authoring systems) will be refined and holistically linked in the AVILUS project so that they are also suitable for implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises.
 
To enable users to optimally access digital information and to provide such information linked, the units of information must be weighted. Only an integrated, semantically described information space (ontologies) that incorporates the entire product life cycle and every manufacturing process allows the vision of a digital factory or a digital products to become reality.
 
Ever more complex operations, parallel product development and shortened development times necessitate the advancement of presently available simulation and presentation technologies and the improvement of their interaction with 3-D environments. What is more, digital data will increasingly also be presented in real environments, which open diverse options for interaction to users such as haptic feedback and make virtual environments nearly realistically experienceable.
 
Virtual Technologies for Training and Everyday Operations
The information age is opening new forms of effective learning and marketing for specific target groups. Thus, technologies employed for computer games will be developed further to utilize them for basic and advanced employee training. In lieu of standard solutions, customers are increasingly demanding products tailored precisely to their needs. This makes it essential to develop new presentation technologies that facilitate customizing the presentation and configuration of products..
 
The methods and technologies developed in AVILUS are intended to link virtual technologies with the real world of work in Germany. They shall be directly integrated in the everyday operations in near real-time and tested for real user situations. Some of the applications being developed in the subprojects include:

• Realistic vehicle representation in an early stage of development dispensing with physical prototypes,
• Benchmarking manufacturing facilities' digital data with the plants constructed later (feedback for the digital factory),
• Employee support in order picking or service and 
• Product presentation in the customer setting.

Download the informational brochure on AVILUS issued by the BMBF (in German only, PDF, 296K)