Extended reality to support product development in makerspaces

Extended Reality (XR) is no longer just an emerging technology and has the potential to improve product development processes by faster time to market, cost reduction, and higher quality in industry, several use cases of extended reality concerning product development can already be observed. The BMW Group uses augmented reality (AR) in the development of vehicle concepts and prototypes, speeding up the design phase up to 12 months and design engineers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems use design concepts to virtually walk through possible assembly or maintenance situations. Especially for makerspaces as they foster product development and additionally provide an approach to learning and teaching scenarios XR provides new possibilities and potentials Yet common equipment lists for makerspaces mainly contain
physical prototyping equipment.