Ford uses VR to design cars in its Palo Alto R&D center

Thanks, Darish. So, I'm Elizabeth Barron and I'm a virtual reality and advanced visualization technical specialist. This is Dan Lincoln and works with the Add on the five team. And what we do is we put together a set of technologies to allow us to get immersed inside any vehicle that we're developing at any point in our product development process. So while we're developing a vehicle, of course it's an iterative process. We're able to look at the vehicle as a customer would see it at any point in time. So to do that, what we do is we give you a headset that has a stereoscopic view of your virtual world. There's markers on the headset that are tracked by the cameras around this room. The vehicle is spatially registered to this room, and it's one to one life size in the room. And what we do is collaborate globally and we share ideas. And it's really what we started out when Jeff said it's the marriage of our and science and engineering all come together. So if no matter what your discipline is at Ford, if you're a hardcore engineer who's really motivated by Excel spreadsheets and numbers, or if you're a passionate artist who's designing the most beautiful surfaces that are so compelling and people are so excited to look at, when you get in this lab and you look at the technology, you're looking at it all from the same perspective, and everybody understands it. So what we do is we have a lab here in Palo Alto, which is new. We have a lab in Dearborn, which is where our headquarters are. And then we have one in Melbourne, Australia, and then we have satellite centers in Germany, China, India, Mexico and Brazil. And all those places share information. And so Dan can pop a view up and you'll watch the power wall, another view will come up and it could be another. So we could have Australia immersed at the same time as us, and we're sharing that information. And so another one of those windows could come up with other information. We could have engineering information on how we're going to manufacture that vehicle, and we could have that displayed as well as this. So it's a really holistic, integrated approach to vehicle development. It brings the customer's voice into every stage of our product development process and our manufacturing process. And it brings together the manufacturing of our vehicle with the development of the vehicle and the research that goes on up front in the Research and Innovation Center. So it's a really nice way of kind of tying it all together. And we're the lucky One that gets to do it. And so I want to show you. So this is running live right now. There is a full size GT in the road right now. And so if I come over here and I grab this, you'll see it move. So through here it's real time. And on this screen we slow it and smooth it so that as an audience member, it's hard to look through somebody's eyes in real time. We just want to make sure that the experience is nice and smooth. So I wear this and it's a stereoscopic view of my world. Sorry.

I might.

Show it to you guys. So I'm seeing the GT and you see what I see through here. And I have tools for my world. So this is a pointer and a flashlight. And if I shine this light, it shines the light on the vehicle.

Watch the corner.

So this is the rear vehicle and it is life size. This is, this is where the end is right here. Look down and Dan's open the door. Can you talk there?

See how the door will go down and up?

So we, in our vehicle development process, we'll open and close every interface, look at everything. We'll understand the fit and finish, the manufacturability and the design. Okay, so you want to close that door for a second.

Okay, so sorry.

I just want you to see it is a life size vehicle. So I. This is the front. We've pushed it back. Like normally in the room we would move it forward because there's no sense but to fit everybody. And so now I can get inside the vehicle. And so now I'm registered to the inside of the gt. So if I look down at my seat, I put this flashlight on the seat. Even though it's not the exact seat, it's spatially registered. So you can kind of tell that, you know, where I should be with respect to the vehicle. And then I can look around.

And.

Look at the different areas of the vehicle, the climate and the power center and the command center interface. And then another important aspect is looking at visibility. So we use this technology to assess what a person would see when they're driving. And so it's important to understand up vision. So what you would see, like if you pulled up to a light and could you see the stoplight? And then what we call down vision, which is looking over the hood and then obstructions potentially at the pillars, which are those, you know, the pillars that come down with the glasses. And so we look at all these things and then we consider the craftsmanship of the vehicle and how, like, the vents are on the side integrated with the door, and how it fits together when it's closed. And the look of the steering wheel and the, you know, the powerful feeling that you get when you look at it because it just looks so awesome. And so we look at the quality of the vehicle and the perceived quality, and then we'll also do some engineering work. So Dan can turn on the sectioning, and I'm controlling it with this pointer, and I can section through the vehicle. And so now I'm looking at the GT and I'm, you know, disappearing and coming back. But the point of this is the data that we're looking at is our engineered data with the design in it. When we look at this data and we do real vehicle development studies, we'll have an engine and a powertrain and a complete model. And this is a lot of data to produce in real time and show you live and collaborate around the world.

So, yeah, that's cool.

Dan. So he just switched aside, and so what he's showing is you can. We can look at any axis. We have tons of flexibility, so we have this great ability to show the vehicle in a ton of different ways really quick. So we can look at different times of day, different options, all kinds of stuff in a pathogen, and where else can you do that? So it's a really efficient, effective way of communicating where we're at and how we're reaching our milestones and what we need to do next. So that's it.

All right.

You guys have any questions?

So I got in the parachute presentation, I think you had the view of that, I guess, with the taxi.

Sure.

And my first thought was to Paramus cockpit. And then I thought, well, first of all, should a car look like a cockpit or is a cockpit a really bad design? And that whole idea of like. Like having someone not get bored but not get overwhelmed. Yeah, sorry. That's kind of more a concept than a question. How do you balance that?

Sure. So. And, you know, we balance it differently across different vehicles. In particular, you know, with the GTI kit, you've got these zones of kind of regions of functionality, and there's a whole lot going on on the steering wheel.

Right.

So personally, of interest, there's going to be a lot going. There's a lot of interest there for others. I. You know, probably there's a few too many things available in a cockpit. I think that's a good example of making all the functionality visible, you know, and maybe separating the analog and the digital and, you know, trying to differentiate the switch types and behaviors and color coding and everything else that's gone into that. I think, you know, we can't go to that extreme. Although we have maybe opening features, functions and you know, I think again as a brand, how we choose to distribute functions and content is important. I think in digital technologies and our use of screens and our expectations around screens that changing stereotypes. So I don't think we actually lose any of the features or functions by even lessening the functions, but we have new means and methods of, you know, maybe presenting information by itself needed or you know, just being more contextually relevant also. Right. So particularly with driver's assistance. And I think as we move towards autonomy and semi autonomy and things like that, when you start to feel the vehicle intervening on your behalf, you know, it's a little bit different sensation, but it's, you know, even nano, you know, we introduce machine intelligence and a new kind of dialogue of what the car can do and what it senses versus what you would do as a human.

That's a really good point. And what I would add to that is, you know, if you look at what I take away from that picture. So when you look at that, that's what that driver felt that he needed.

Right.

To do all the things he wanted to do. And then our challenge is how do we use technology to rationalize all of that?

Right.

He didn't have a solution that he needed to write, so he took a lot of screens and pasted them around his car. And you look at that and that's probably not ideal, but how do we apply technologies like machine intelligence, like advanced interfaces to give him what he needs, but to do it in a way that's more compatible with rider.

Any other questions?

Just one.

Follow up. Had you said that you would sign it to fully depending on the guitar or the driver's car?

Sure. I think, you know, we find people kind of long. They just behave differently in vehicles and they're such a bad. We find people that want to be extremely productive and we find people that want to. They use their time as kind of their time to connect with others. Right. I'm going to go through my task list. I'm going to make a lot of phone calls. We find people that just want to be purely entertained and they want to kind of clear their mind. You know, I've had a long day. I don't want to have to think about work. I just want to clear my mind and have some me time, you know, and reset as I travel. Right. So accommodating all those variations, I think is what's challenging. It can be flexible to Jeff's point of not having them to have to bring in everything in the parts and pieces. But that said, you know, if, if we have multiple passengers in an Explorer or we're, you know, it's a fleet vehicle, more popular, you know, transit connective or something like that, versus just to get around town Fiesta versus a high performance vehicle. You know, the drivers behave differently, they kind of have different expectations, they probably live different lifestyles and again those kind of socio and economic different lifestyle oriented things. We try to reflect in layouts and in functionality, but we also try to choose what we think is the best, you know, the most efficient way and.

You can change dynamically.

Also we talk about the track mode versus the main mode.

Okay, great, great.

Just a quick question. I'm sure that there's a difference in lifestyle buyers and so your vehicle line executives, for instance, a Lincoln mkz, whatever buyer is probably looking for different things in technology and entertainment than the Focus GT buyer. Just a guess on my board. And then this car, I would assume that it's more of a infotainment, minimalist structure. Assuming that the car itself has plenty of entertainment.

I think that's exactly right. But you know, we do try to understand, you know, really what who are the target buyers and really what the market segmentation is for vehicles. And we try to understand those customers and use our understanding of them as we progress the design so that we're not designing a one size.

I think we're ready to rotate. Sorry to interrupt. I want to make sure you get to the next session as well. So you're going straight here on the left into the garage and the lab will be running later if you want to come in and have a virtual instrument.

Pretty cool stuff.

See you guys later.