Evaluating VR practices to support collaborative cabin design process using a human factor approach

Effective collaboration is necessary to overcome complexities in the early stages of aircraft design and development, especially when multiple experts and disciplines are involved in the process. However, there are many barriers in achieving an effective collaborative and multidisciplinary team, such as limited resources and tools, technological limitations, the availability of real time feedback and expertise, and time constrains due to travel and cost. Technological advancements within virtual, augmented and mixed realities provide a unique capability of remote collaborative opportunities that can overcome some of the identified barriers. The National Research Council of Canada (NRC), in close collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt - DLR)., proposes to build, use and evaluate a collaborative VR/AR environment that will simulate an aircraft cabin to develop new and disruptive human-centered designs in aircraft cabins. This paper outlines a proposed development of such platform by using human factors approaches to enable remote collaborative work in aircraft cabin design.