Vision Network: AR and VR for Digital Built Britain

This project investigated the potential impact of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies on smart cities and smart infrastructure.

As part of the Digital Built Britain framework, AR and VR technologies are of utmost importance as industries of architecture, construction and engineering rely heavily on imagery for communication.

The National Infrastructure Commission report, Data for the Public Good, (December 2017), considered AR and VR as key new technologies to increase the productivity of infrastructure and support decision-making. AR and VR technologies will be essential when visualising data in real-time – as well as in context – to enable the smart cities and smart infrastructure paradigms.

Project details

The Vision Network intends to outline a complete and useful landscape of state-of-the-art research and technologies in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). AR and VR technologies are becoming widespread and are evolving the meaning of visual communication. Every industry will be affected by AR and VR technologies. So far, they have been used for gaming and entertainment; tourism; marketing; education and training, etc.

The Vision Network is composed of a mix of academics and practitioners with extensive and varied expertise in digital technologies, applied specifically to engineering and construction. It will contribute to developing the research agenda, enhancing the level of performance and digitisation for future smart cities and smart construction at citizen, portfolio, organisation and project levels.

More specifically, the Vision Network will define a visualisation research agenda that considers:

• the three asset DBB stages: delivery; operation; and integration.
• the various stakeholders through the life-cycle of the asset (eg owner, builders, managers, users, etc)
• different spatial scales (eg room, building, blocks, neighbourhoods, regions, etc).

The objective of Vision Network is to delineate the current AR and VR technologies and identify their potential to contribute to the development of the Digital Built Britain vision. Find out more about the Centre for Digital Built Britain.