Heterogeneous Remote Visualization Framework for Ubiquitous Product Development Activities

Abstract

Design office, as is known today, is a workplace where various experts gather and develop products. Traditionally, the trend in engineering product development has been to use desktop computers, virtual reality systems and other systems and devices placed in specific workplace locations. Clearly, these sorts of stationary support tools are desirable because they matchup the product development methodological frameworks that have prevailed over the past several decades. With the availability of a wide spectrum of improved mobile and wireless communication technologies coupled with increased network bandwidth and enhanced software for mobile data-communication networks, design researchers now have new opportunity of exploring and coming up with concrete recommendations on how these technologies should be utilized in product development. Therefore, the work reported in this paper aimed at investigating how to take advantage of these technologies and how the product developers can benefit from the capabilities provided by both portable and non-portable information and communication devices. The focus was specifically on the challenge of visualization of product data and models remotely. The main characteristic requirements for a remote product visualization environment have been formulated and used as the basis for creation of a generic framework. It has been shown that the proposed framework meets some of the key requirements.