21st Century Prototyping: Improving product prototyping through the integration of physical and digital workflow

为了设计未来的产品，我们需要未来的原型工具。在超过300亿英镑的消费产品市场中，对非技术用户语音的需求等优先事项与先进产品和坚韧的时间/成本目标竞争。这些压力在原型设计过程中感受到了，在这个过程中，单个产品的模型通常有100多个，并且是不灵活的，技术先进的，并且需要大量的资源来创建。为了成功和发展原型需要做更多，更快，更便宜，更高的可访问性。这个项目旨在提高学习，可访问性和效率在原型。它将探索将物理和数字原型无缝集成到一个工作流程中的可行性和价值。最近和迅速兴起的技术，如混合现实，触觉界面和手势控制，已经彻底改变了我们与数字世界的互动方式。据预测，到2025年，这项技术将无处不在，在未来十年将具有颠覆性，并将推动我们在未来数字化工作场所的工作和互动方式，并设计出实现价值的前五大领域。在原型设计中，他们将打破物理-数字鸿沟，创造无缝体验，同时实现每个领域的优势。这种新的物理-数字集成工作流程为工程师和用户带来了深刻的机会，支持技术活动并简化沟通。在许多可能性中，用户可以实时物理地创建和感受原型的数字变化，动态地将高级分析叠加到物理模型上，并通过物理数字，触觉，交互式原型支持早期决策。这些能力将使每个原型有更多的学习机会，扩大技术设计的可及性，并简化原型制作过程。然而，我们还不知道如何实现这一令人兴奋的愿景，确切地说，可能会有什么好处，价值或成本，实施的可行性，或有效的工作流程方法。该项目将通过创建和研究几个演示平台来探索物理-数字工作流程，这些演示平台结合联合收割机并将触觉，混合现实和手势控制技术应用于目标原型场景。将探索技术，以了解孤立的冲刺能力，然后优先考虑和开发成重点演示工具，使我们能够探索跨真实的原型案例的集成工作流程，跨越活动，类型和利益相关者。Demonstrative将与最终用户、行业合作伙伴和公众一起进行评估和验证，以建立学习、速度、成本和使用特性。项目成果将包括集成原型的工作流程，并了解价值、有效性、可行性和未来机会。实施的“工具包”还将为工业合作伙伴和学术界提供范例，并在工程中有效使用集成的物理-数字工作流程。所有软件和硬件都将通过Github和项目网页开源，让全球研究人员和公众创建自己的系统并在此基础上进行开发。未来的工作将根据工作成果扩展功能，从而产生下一代工程设计和原型工具。工业合作伙伴The Product Partnership（Amalgam、Realise Design和Cubik）和AMRC将带来原型设计、工程师和最终用户的专业知识，并从开发的工作流程和技术中受益。OEM厂商Ultraleap和Autodesk将带来身临其境的技术专业知识和先进的设计系统，并将受益于案例研究实施和研究以及未来的应用机会。布里斯托数字未来研究所将促进20多个合作伙伴企业和公众的合作，其产出将支持其解决全球问题的数字解决方案的使命。

To design the future of products we need the future of prototyping tools. Across the £30Bn+ consumer product markets, priorities such as demand for non-technical user voice vie against advanced products and tough time/cost targets. These pressures are acutely felt in the prototyping process, where models often number in the 100s for a single product, and are inflexible, technically advanced, and resource-intensive to create. To succeed and evolve prototyping needs to do more, quicker, cheaper, with higher accessibility.This project aims to enhance learning, accessibility, and efficiency during prototyping. It will explore feasibility and value of seamlessly integrating physical and digital prototyping into a single workflow.Recent and rapidly emerging technologies such as mixed reality, haptic interfaces, and gesture control have revolutionised the way we interact with the digital world. It's predicted that this tech will be ubiquitous by 2025, will be disruptive for the next decade, and will drive the way we work and interact across the future digital workplace, with engineering a top-5 sector to realise value. In prototyping, they will break down the physical-digital divide and create seamless experiences, where the strengths of each domain are realised simultaneously.This new physical-digital integrated workflow brings profound opportunities for both engineers and users, supporting technical activities and simplifying communication. Amongst many possibilities users may physically create and feel digital changes to prototypes in real-time, dynamically overlay advanced analyses onto physical models, and support early-stage decision-making with physical-digital, tactile, interactive prototypes. These capabilities will allow more learning per prototype, widen accessibility to technical design and streamline the prototyping process. However, we don't yet know how this exciting vision may be fulfilled, exactly what benefits, value or costs there may be, feasibility of implementation, or effective workflow approaches.The project will explore physical-digital workflow by creating and investigating several demonstrator platforms that combine and apply haptic, mixed reality, and gesture control technologies in targeted prototyping scenarios. Technologies will be explored to understand capability in isolated sprints, before prioritisation and development into focused demonstrator tools that allow us to explore integrated workflow across real prototyping cases, spanning activities, types, and stakeholders. Demonstrators will be evaluated and verified with end-users, industry partners, and the public to establish learning, speed, cost, and usage characteristics.Project outcomes will comprise workflows for integrated prototyping with knowledge of value, effectiveness, feasibility, and future opportunities. A 'toolkit' of implementations will also provide exemplars for industrial partners and academia and lead the effective use of integrated physical-digital workflow in engineering. All software and hardware will be open-sourced via Github and the project webpage, letting global researchers and the public create their own systems and build upon the work. Future work will extend capabilities in line with outcomes of the work, leading to the next generation of engineering design and prototyping tools.Industrial Partners The Product Partnership (Amalgam, Realise Design, and Cubik) and AMRC will bring prototyping, engineers, and end-user expertise and benefit from the workflows and technologies that are developed. OEMs Ultraleap and Autodesk will bring immersive technology expertise and access to cutting edge design systems, and will benefit from case study implementations and studies and future application opportunities. Bristol Digital Futures Institute will facilitate collaboration across 20+ partner businesses and the public, with outputs supporting their mission for digital solutions that tackle global problems.