The Volkswagen Group says it has bundled all of its virtual reality (VR) applications for production and logistics into a ‘Digital Reality Hub’.

The OEM claims to be the first car manufacturer to roll out VR technology with the HTC VIVE-VR system.

The move, which bundles all of VW’s existing VR applications, users and tools on a single platform, is a cross-brand cooperation within the group.

“Virtual reality creates the ideal conditions for cross-brand and cross-site collaboration”, said Jasmin Müller from Audi brand logistics and part of the brand Digital Realities team that develops VR solutions for production and logistics.

Under the umbrella of group logistics and the “Digital Factory”, the Digital Realities team is currently developing further virtual reality applications for production and logistics within Audi, Seat, Škoda and Volkswagen operations.

They include logistics training applications and virtual environments for workshops.

Dennis Abmeier, IT lead, Volkswagen Digital Realities, said: “All employees have access to all existing VR elements as well as existing knowledge via the platform.

“That way, we enable individual units to implement new use cases quickly and jointly move in VR applications so they can plan new workflows interactively.”

Volkswagen Konzernlogistik (group logistics) at the company's headquarters in Wolfsburg has been overseeing a number of new digital technology innovations across group brands, from smart gloves to AGVs. The division is also tasked with encouraging and spreading innovation from one brand across others. Read more on the group's digitalisation in logistics here.