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Nissan Design collaborates with Haptx to make virtual reality vehicle design more realistic

Nissan Design is working with Haptx to bring higher levels of realism to virtual reality-based vehicle design, based on an announcement made by the companies recently.

Haptx is a manufacturer of virtual reality gloves that are equipped with haptic technology. It is a touch sensitive technology owing to as many as 130 actuators present within the gloves. The gloves can be utilised to touch things virtually within a VR-based environment.

Haptx Gloves are being used by Nissan designers to perform touching and interactions with three-dimensional models with a virtual space. The gloves effortlessly facilitate design reviewing, a procedure that required expensive life-size prototypes.

Nissan is at the forefront of the new era of design in a recent statement. With Haptx being accepted as tool of choice by the globally-renowned Nissan design team was an honour for the company.  By collaborating with Nissan, the company can dynamically improve vehicle design procedures. It will empower automakers to take faster and better decisions. – Joe Michaels, chief revenue officer, Haptx

 

Image Credit: Nissan/Haptx

This latest announcement from Haptx comes closely behind its previous one, which declared its partnership with FundamentalVR for the creation of virtual reality gloves that can be utilised by physicians performing VR surgery.

Virtual reality has been an area of focus for the auto industry in recent times. This technology form has gained a lot of investment as it is reducing the need for physical prototypes. Challenges with touch and input are quite real for designers. VR controllers do not offer touch-based feedback and hinder designers from performing natural interactions with vehicle models.

Haptx is working with Nissan to solve such challenges. Haptx Gloves facilitate a realistic feel of the vehicle models being designed, and enables effortless duplication using haptic prototyping rather than physical prototyping. This new technology can revolutionise vehicle design procedures and facilitate high cost and time savings for automobile manufacturers.

The process of creating the initial three-dimensional vehicle model and utilising the completed physical prototype usually takes many years. By utilising Haptx Gloves, the time can be reduced to a few days, and designers can perform various actions like holding the steering wheel and tweaking the volume knob, without even crafting a piece of steel. Automakers get a better idea of the customer experience they will provide with the vehicle.

 

Image Credit: Nissan/Haptx

Jake Rubin, CEO, Haptx, revealed that automakers have had to cope up with design process imperfections. The unnatural feel of VR controllers fail to provide realistic feedback during design, whereas physical prototypes are costly and limited in features. According to him, gloves made by Haptx address such limitations, as auto designers can get a real feel of their vehicle models and get rapid VR prototyping.

Nissan is the first Japanese automaker to utilise Haptx Gloves. The company has already created many designs using Haptx Gloves, including the bestselling electric car Nissan Leaf and Nissan IMs, which is a concept luxury sports sedan shown at NAIAS in January.

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