Virtual and augmented reality applied to product life cycle-from shoe to motorbike

An industriai product goes through several phases from the starting idea to the finished product (conception, design, prototyping, etc.) and more to the selling, use and end of life. Each of these phases required the interaction of human beings (the designer, an engineer, a worker, the customer, etc). The VR (Virtual Reality) environments are characterized by the real time interaction between the user and the system while the AR (Augmented Reality) environments add to the real scene virtual elements; both of them give the possibility to perform, in a completely digitai or mixed environment, such kind of interaction with the product, bringing in the sense of being there. The use of VR/ AR techniques are, nowadays, consolidated in the scientific community as support tool along the whole product/process life cycle, but they are not commonly adopted by industry in their day-by-day activities; mainly because virtual application was not always both user friendly, despite their own nature, as well reliable in the presentati o n of results. In the past 10 years ITIA-CNR has been involved in research and development activities in order to present VR/ AR techniques to industries in such a way they can adopt them in their processes. In this paper some case studies are presented.