VR within Service Engineering

Several cross functional projects are ongoing to move the way that Volvo works into the future. Functions are coming together focusing on one mission; To take many of the complex parts of the engineering process and move them into Virtual Reality.

Today, we have the capabilities to display an entire truck to scale in VR with no loss in quality from the CAD data. The VR tool also allows us to manipulate and view the truck in ways that would be impossible in the real world while also displaying information about any component on demand. One of VR's biggest advantages is that anyone anywhere has the opportunity to carefully study the engineering solutions of a complete truck without having to be close to the physical object. This in turn makes it possible to frontload product development projects and make manufacturability and serviceability analyses on a conceptual level long before any physical components exist. The one to one scale experience in VR makes it easier to understand the product, compared by using desktop software.

In the field of aftermarket and maintainability, the technology of VR supports the aftermarket engineers in the development of aftermarket and service market solutions. The technology helps the engineers to develop and analyse service methods, also to understand the ergonomic aspects of the technicians in the workshop. Furthermore, the technology has a huge potential in the field of training, especially for technicians. Virtual Reality provides a training environment where it is possible to interact and learn in an intuitive way. The video visualizes an example of a filter replacement.