Survey shows use of AR/VR technology for automotive design, production support

A survey of automotive manufacturing executives shows the critical steps carmakers are planning and taking to leverage more automation technology to deal with COVID-19 social distancing, staffing shortfalls, and the need for overall efficiencies in production.

The online survey, commissioned in July by Grid Raster, a Mountain View, Calif., provider of cloud-based XR platforms that power augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences on mobile devices, showed that 39% of respondents are implementing AR/VR technologies over the next 12 months.

The survey revealed that for 71% of automotive plant executives, COVID-19 has either moved them to start planning or to “fast-track” plans for AR/VR implementations. Sixty-eight percent of executives are planning to use AR/VR for virtual automotive design.For those automotive manufacturers that have already implemented technologies such as AR/VR, 38% say they’re seeing a 10% to 15% increase in savings. Seventy-one percent are leveraging AR/VR for supplemental virtual labor on production lines, and another 65% are using it for virtual customer service visits.

Scalability is a major concern for many automotive manufacturers—79% point to scalability as a reason they haven’t implemented AR/VR yet, and for those that have made implementations, 52% say they need to move their AR/VR to the cloud for additional scalability.