Real uses of virtual reality in the industry

This article looks at the potential of virtual reality in the industrial sector. Historically, the manufacturing industry (automotive, aeronautics, railways, etc.) has been exploiting virtual reality for a quarter of a century or more! The term "virtual reality" didn't exist when transport simulators were developed half a century ago, immersing a driver in a vehicle to help design and evaluate a future means of transport.

Defining virtual reality is a vital task. There are still definitions in the literature and in the media that misleadingly mix up the purpose of virtual reality, its functions, its applications and the techniques on which it is based, such as the visiocasque.

We need to take a step back from all the fields of activity that claim to exploit virtual reality. After some thought in the early 1990s, regardless of the technologies used, it became clear that in all fields, the purpose of virtual reality is to enable a user to act physically in an artificial environment, the latter being digitally created so that it can be modified. To act physically, the user must already be immersed in it, which is done via some of his senses. And his physical activity is achieved through his motor (muscular) actions. So, in more precise, more scientific terms, we'd speak of sensorimotor activities, rather than physical activities. Of course, while in practical, technical terms we're talking about offering a sensory-motor activity to a person, we're also talking about cognitive (mental) activities, which may be the intended aim of the application, with sensory-motor activities being merely a means to an end (figure 1 ).

The environment, artificial at the sensorimotor level, can be totally virtual or, in the case of augmented reality, partially virtual. The aim, which has long been shared by all those working in this field, is therefore to :

The aim of virtual reality is to enable one or more people to engage in sensorimotor and cognitive activities in an artificial, digitally-created environment, which may be imaginary, symbolic or a simulation of certain aspects of the real world.

This definition specifies that we have three theoretical cases, providing different potentialities for applications: creating an imaginary world (artistic applications), exploiting symbolic entities or simulating certain aspects of the real world. For industrial applications, we exploit the third...