Why automotive innovators embrace extended reality
Many global automotive corporations and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) integrate extended reality (XR) applications into their design and manufacturing pipelines. These practical XR solutions offer designers and engineers a more intuitive way to visualize and interact with data and empower developers to apply data in new contexts across their organizations.
Let’s explore a few examples of automotive ingenuity from industry leaders. This article will cover core uses cases including:
- Virtual design collaboration
- Human-machine interfaces
- Design presentation toolkits
- Simulation-assisted inspection
- 3D product configurators
Virtual design collaboration
When specialized design teams work on discrete elements of interrelated vehicle systems, even incremental changes – say, small adjustments to the shape of a door handle – can have implications for load tolerance or fluid dynamics. Immersive technology allows XR developers to build virtual collaboration environments that synergize the activity of distributed teams.
To improve design communication, Volvo Cars sought to establish an end-to-end pipeline that would allow creative stakeholders to visualize concepts and view results in real time. The resulting XR app incorporated high-fidelity digital models of Volvo’s vehicles to do just that.
Innovation leads at Volvo’s Virtual Experiences lab harnessed computer-aided design (CAD) data using Unity’s Pixyz Plugin to achieve parity between designs and their digital duplicates. This ingestion pipeline helped them construct and systematize vehicle models from thousands of digital parts, creating fully interactive digital twins of Volvo’s world-class safety systems.
After improving design workflows, Volvo’s XR devs deployed their robust vehicle models in applications designed to validate user behaviors. During live road tests with prototype vehicles, drivers equipped with Varjo VR headsets generate real-time interaction data to be captured by an analyst using a remote virtual viewer.
These continuous development tests help Volvo analysts evaluate user needs, optimize functions, and ensure the safest, most comfortable ride possible for millions of drivers.
Human-machine interfaces (HMI)
Having revolutionized on-board navigation with their first-party hardware, TomTom continues to push boundaries with digital cockpit technologies for the world’s top automotive manufacturers. Because these solutions incorporate highly responsive user interfaces and procedurally generated, photorealistic landscapes, building them requires robust real-time performance.
TomTom chose Unity to accelerate the prototyping of complex UI/UX. Using a variety of prefabricated components – such as glyphs, dials, UI text, or scroll bars – their developers could rapidly build and customize a baseline HMI configuration and pair it with integrated mapping solutions from provider partners.
Because Unity technology natively supports industry-standard HMI hardware and operating systems, TomTom’s team could deploy to embedded hardware targets without requiring additional build compilations. They also took full advantage of their Industry Success advisors, leaning on expert guidance for technical challenges or for upskilling developers new to Unity.
Stay tuned for more news about Unity’s partnership with Mazda to develop the next generation of human-machine interfaces (HMI) for cockpit technologies.
Design presentation toolkits
Honda’s Saitama Design Center focuses on building new concepts for future Honda vehicles and manufacturing processes. To better realize the dual Honda Strengths of motozukuri, the joy of meticulous craftwork, and kotozukuri, narratively relaying that joy to prospective buyers, the Saitama research team embarked on a digital transformation using XR technology.
In this case, the sought-after buy-in came from chief designers and fellow stakeholders. Inert assets such as photographs and schematics didn’t fully actualize the spirit of kotozukuri, which could result in unnecessary friction during design reviews. What better way to exhibit Honda’s state-of-the-art vehicles than to bring them to life in a virtual world?
To facilitate design review, the Design Center’s R&D team decided to virtualize vehicle concepts in Unity and build custom presentation applications to showcase their 3D models. Pixyz technologies made it easy to dynamically generate 3D meshes from CAD and FBX files, thereby preserving data integrity from the outset.
Engineers leveraged Unity’s extensibility to script tooling and spin up customized Unity Editor frameworks that offered simplified and advanced editing modes so that designers of any skill level could rig and animate fully interactive vehicle models in order to create captivating presentations in just one day – a process that used to take weeks.
Simulation-assisted inspection
Toyota Motor Corporation made similar discoveries about XR tech while seeking to optimize computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. The traditional factory inspection process involved collecting and manually annotating over 20,000 high-resolution photographs to train machine learning models, whose collection and curation took a combined 200 hours on average.
To accelerate progress, Toyota’s XR and HoloLens Development lab used Unity to build bespoke virtual reality (VR) overlays for its inspection teams. With Pixyz Plugin’s dynamic mesh-tessellation and polygon-decimation features, the team quickly turned 3D design files into lifelike virtual vehicles.
These models jumpstarted the development of a VR overlay offering enhanced X-ray views and integrated simulation routines. With the newfound ability to model airflow and display test results in real time, CFD analysts inspect and stress-test designs in just a few weeks.
3D product configurators
XR applications have proven impactful for both design teams and sales professionals alike. Autoliv, the world’s largest automotive safety supplier, chose Unity to showcase its industry-leading air bags, seat belts, and other safety devices in an interactive iOS app that added versatility to its outbound sales efforts.
To build the interactive virtual experience, Autoliv’s tech partner Cybercom Services leveraged Pixyz to bring CAD files to life, effectively reducing production time from four days to just six hours. They then built an intuitive user interface that allowed sales teams and customers to interact with Autoliv’s full line of safety products in more meaningful presentations.
With the greater context afforded by X-ray views, cross-sections, and exploded perspectives, Autoliv’s sales team quickly found that the interactive experience conveyed product capabilities to prospective buyers in ways that physical assets simply couldn’t. The Explore application soon found its way to the reception areas of all of Autoliv’s factories, where industrial customers could appreciate the ingenuity of their designs before viewing their real-world counterparts.
VR hits the road
The impact of XR applications is clear. Whether the use case is design collaboration, product demonstrations, or virtually assisted testing and simulation, immersive technologies offer new contexts that accelerate innovation. As the automotive industry increasingly shifts toward XR-driven processes, the world’s leading automotive corporations are rapidly outpacing competitors in design innovation, safety improvements, and customer engagement.
Automotive XR applications can incorporate layered viewing perspectives, interactive components, or simulation scripts that model real-world phenomena such as load, airflow, and drag – all of which accelerate the design iteration process.
With Unity Industry, automakers can enhance their entire production pipeline – from concept to customer delivery – with immersive, data-rich experiences.