Immersive Technologies to Accelerate Innovation. Simon Richir

us to prepare for the rebound after the crisis. More recently, during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the rapid use of digitalization and the electrification of transport are already preparing us for environmental challenges, particularly related to global warming and the necessary reduction in the use of fossil fuels. In this changing world, the innovation process facilitates change and creates a positive, continuous and visible dynamic. This process is useful for companies to focus efforts at the right time, with the right intensity, in the right place, with competent and prepared teams. The notions of market and temporality are also crucial. Without a market, innovation will only remain at the invention stage, an expense for the company with no return on investment. To be successful, this implies a continuous intimacy with customers, a shared value creation process. The innovation process must also adapt to the context and make the most of available technologies, wherever they may be, from our suppliers, our academic partners, and public or private research. The meeting with the teams working at the Laval Virtual Center and the work carried out with the Institut Arts et Métiers de Laval have enabled MANN+HUMMEL, a leading global company in filtration technology, to strengthen its strategy in the field of digitalization, by seeking to create value from digital data, and by applying it to the innovation process. The speed with which we can interact with our customers in our ideation processes, up to the realization of prototypes, real or virtual, is an important factor in convincing future customers, investors and internal or external decision makers. In 2016, based on this observation, the collaboration between MANN+HUMMEL and the Institut Arts et Métiers de Laval was initiated in order to conduct research and experimentation on the contribution of technology, related to virtual reality, to the innovation process. This project is called “Time to Concept”, and its objective is to reduce the time between ideation and the first customer experience. It is about putting the user or the customer at the center of the game by immersing them, gathering their emotions and feedback, and taking these into account in real time to adapt the product or the service. It is also of course about converging, at the end, on a creation of value, demonstrated in the virtual environment, with system interactions made more visible. For example, during a recent car show in Frankfurt, we managed to put a few customers under virtual reality headsets to gather their impressions of a new vehicle interior filtration system: a situation lasting less than two minutes to explain everything, in particular to visualize the invisible, that is, the improvement of the vehicle’s air quality. Remembering the experience, one of them, a world-renowned car manufacturer, then selected us to create a demonstration vehicle. In the field of air quality improvement, which is one of the strategic axes of the MANN+HUMMEL Group, we try to make visible with the help of virtual reality the physical phenomena at stake, such as fluid mechanics, the propagation of pollutants and their filtration. Explaining them is all the more necessary to bring to the market new and more efficient filtration technologies, adapted to the new uses of mobility and our lifestyles, and also in tune with the new recommendations and regulations in this field. Thus, this book describes the generic results of research work validated in concrete cases to support the digital transformation of innovation within companies through immersive technologies.

      Jérôme Migaud

      Transportation Innovation Director

      at MANN+HUMMEL Group

      September 2021

      Acknowledgments

      We would like to thank our industrial partners for providing us with study sites and opportunities to evaluate the methods described in this book in real-life situations. In particular, we would like to thank MANN+HUMMEL for their contribution through the financing of the Time to Concept Chair, which has given rise to a number of the research projects presented in this book. We think in particular of Jérôme Migaud, Bruno Langer, Philippe Rhoumy and Luc De Keyser. Our thanks go to the Arts et Métiers Foundation for its support to the Chair, in particular Gilbert Paulezec and Roger Stanchina, but also Aurélien Agnès who supported us for 1 year in this scientific program. Of course, we would like to thank the representatives of the steering committee of the Time to Concept Chair: Jean Quessada, Ivan Iordanoff, Alexandre Rigal, Xavier Château and Xavier Kestelyn.

      We would also like to thank Charles Mille for the numerous exchanges that contributed to the reflections on the methods and tools, and also Thibaut Guitter and Benjamin Poussard for their participation in the research work and the design of the virtual reality tools, as well as Marie-Pierre Verrier for preparing the numerous communication and scientific sharing events that punctuated this program.

      Numerous scientific collaborations with researchers from our team or outside have also contributed to this work, in particular Olivier Christmann, Geoffrey Gorisse, Philippe Blanchard, Marc Pallot and Laurent Dupont.

      The students of the MTI3D Master’s at the Institut Arts et Métiers de Laval contributed to this work by realizing some of the technology elements presented in this book.

      Finally, thanks to Laurent Chrétien and the great team of Laval Virtual for their logistical support and for the regular exchanges on the uses of immersive technologies that have stimulated our creativity over the years.

      September 2021

      Preface

      In this book, we regularly refer to research work conducted by our team at the Institut Arts et Métiers de Laval. It is therefore not superfluous to provide a few elements of context beforehand.

      The École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers is a French engineering school renowned for its orientation toward the industrial world. The Institut de Laval, attached to the Angers campus, has developed in conjunction with the Laval virtual reality ecosystem and in particular Laval Virtual, the organizers of the international virtual reality trade show. The institute manages the MTI3D master’s degree, which trains high-level students in the management and engineering of immersive technologies. The Institute’s researchers form the “presence and innovation” team of the “Laboratoire Arts et Métiers ParisTech d’Angers” (LAMPA). The work of the team concerns not only virtual reality, user experience and use cases of virtual reality in different industrial sectors (training, health, product design, etc.) but also innovation methods and creativity. Alongside research activities, the team is led to support companies in their adoption of immersive technologies and also in their innovation processes, notably through the animation of creativity workshops.

Within the framework of the Chair entitled Time to Concept, a series of work has been completed on immersive technologies for ideation. This work has enabled the formalization and evaluation of the Time to Concept method described in this book. It is therefore both a researcher’s viewpoint that is proposed and the result of a field experience built on the basis of tests and regular feedback in real situations.

      September 2021

      Introduction

      Humanity has always sought to innovate by inventing new products, services or manufacturing processes. Innovation is part of our DNA. The Renaissance (14th–16th centuries) was a period of greatness. Five hundred years later, we are now living in the “Renaissance 2.0”, a new period of major innovations, both great and troubled, that history will remember.

      Collective intelligence, boosted by increasing network speeds and artificial intelligence, gives rise to new ideas every second across the planet. Like comets, most of these ideas fade away as quickly as they appeared, before being transformed into intelligible concepts that can be seized by the companies best equipped for innovation.

      The digital transformation of companies is a competitive challenge and a complex step for large groups and industries, but at the same time a tremendous opportunity. This transformation