OPTIS and EADS Innovation Works Announce Strategic Partnership for the R.H.E.A Virtual Reality Platform

France: OPTIS and EADS Innovation Works have signed a strategic partnership to transfer to OPTIS the industrialization, commercial deployment and the sharing of long‐term development of the virtual reality platform, R.H.E.A.

The R.H.E.A platform (for Realistic Human Experiment Analysis), developed and finalized by EADS Innovation Works over the past five years, offers a virtual reality space for carrying out ergonomics studies on future products and their manufacturing process.

Designers and ergonomists can take the place of the future pilot, crew member, passenger or technician, to experience various tasks and explore a series of technical solutions by interacting directly with the digital mock up. To ensure that the analysis is pertinent, the application enables the designer to put the product into context by adding external environments and trajectories. A scenario management module completes the platform. A semi-automatic process transfers even the largest models of CAD data quickly to the VR environment.

Already deployed by Airbus in Toulouse and St. Nazaire (France), and Hamburg (Germany), the R.H.E.A platform is now an integral part of the design and manufacturing process on the new Airbus A350 aircraft. R.H.E.A is also ready to be deployed by Eurocopter and Astrium.

Allowing decisions to be taken very early in the design process, this technology can be applied across various industries, whenever taking into account human interaction with a complete environment is critical to the final design. R.H.E.A also enables assembly and maintenance personnel to train on a product that would normally be difficult to access.

OPTIS, a leading worldwide provider of solutions for the modeling of visual ergonomics and optical simulation, adds its competencies in human vision simulation and physics based virtual prototyping in order to reach an equaled level of realism and accuracy.

Jacques Delacour, Founder, CEO and President of OPTIS, said: “This partnership is an important milestone for OPTIS: Thanks to our unique know‐how in optical simulation, we can now address the worlds of simulators and virtual reality. The availability of the R.H.E.A platform completes our offer and enables us to propose a global solution to our customers with immediate effect. The confidence that EADS shows OPTIS via this partnership confirms our desire to offer physical solutions, which enable product designers to take critical decisions by the means of virtual reality.”

Didier Guedra-Degeorges, Vice President for Structure Engineering, Production Processes & Aeromechanics at EADS Innovation Works said: “This partnership will ensure a proper dissemination and support of this advanced technology over the complete EADS extended enterprise. It’s part of our mission not only to create differentiating technologies for EADS but also to implement them in an industrial supply chain. In addition, based on the international OPTIS commercial coverage (USA, Japan etc) we are confident that multi‐sectorial applications will quickly demonstrate the huge potential of the R.H.E.A platform.”

EADS Innovation Works is the EADS Group’s global research and technology network. In addition to primary locations in Munich/Ottobrunn and Paris/Suresnes, it also has branches in Getafe, Spain; Newport and Filton, U.K.; Toulouse, Nantes and Méaulte, France; Hamburg, Bremen and Stade, Germany; Singapore; Bangalore, India; Beijing, China and Moscow, Russia. Altogether, the EADS Innovation Works international network employs more than 700 people.