Volvo Cars begins to use technologies of the mixed reality for creation of cars

Volvo Cars and Varjo, the Finnish producer of the headset augmented reality, developed based on the mixed reality (mixed reality, MR) approach to assessment of pre-series models, automobile constructions and technologies of active security.

Further cooperation will be expanded at the expense of the solution Volvo Cars Tech Fund to invest in Varjo company. The investment fund of the Swedish car maker supports technology startups with high potential of development.

Thanks to joint development of Volvo Cars and Varjo for the first time became possible to drive the real car in a helmet of the mixed reality. MR technologies are capable to complement reality with certain elements or the whole objects which are perceived by the driver and automobile sensors as the presents. Still none of automobile car makers had such opportunity.

The provided glasses of virtual reality Varjo XR-1 provide the photorealistic mixed or virtual reality in the high resolution exceeding offered by other analogs. Thanks to XR-1 it will be possible to reduce significantly time for development of the automobile systems and technologies: now they can be estimated instantly.

In comparison with the predecessor, XR-1 glasses are equipped with cameras of high resolution and do possible the mixed reality. Designers and engineers of Volvo Cars will be able "to drive" the cars of the future and to estimate their functions and characteristics using simulators for several years before they leave in mass production. It will allow the company to develop and make the safest cars in the market and to guarantee to clients the most positive impressions of use of the car.

"Tools of the mixed reality will give us the chance to test those developments which still are in literal sense on blueprint stage, – Henrik Green, the leading specialist on Volvo Cars technologies comments. – Instead of a standard stationary method of assessment of new products and concepts we can test them in real road conditions now. Such approach assumes significant economy of costs due to identification of the priority directions of developments and elimination of the factors containing growth".

XR-1 will allow engineers of Volvo Cars much quicker and more simply to develop and test solutions in the field of active security. Experts of security will be able to drive the real cars XR-1 wearing spectacles in Volvo research centers in Sweden and to test the virtual systems of active security using augmented reality in actual practice.

The technology of tracking of the movement of eyes which will help to understand how drivers react to a new feature of the car is built in XR-1 and whether something distracts them. This approach to assessment of extent of derivation based on technologies from the road will help Volvo Cars to develop systems which would not distract drivers from driving once again.

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