Project IRMA " Virtual Reality for Manufacturing Applications", is an Intelligent Manufacturing Systems(IMS) approved inter-regional Virtual Reality (VR) project with partners from the European Union, Newly Associated States of Eastern Europe, Switzerland and Japan. The key aims of the project are to build, integrate, demonstrate and evaluate VR ‘application demonstrators’ which reflect different but complementary aspects of industrial manufacturing, and integrate different commercially available software simulation tools with Virtual Environment software (VEs) that support real-time, two-way, interaction.

In order to meet this aim, a technical solution involving the integration of commercial simulation packages such as Delmia’s QUESTTM , IGRIPTM and a number of VE applications has been attempted. In addition the project has the aim of developing a secure VR data-transfer software solution suitable for site to site transmission and receipt of the simulation world(SW) and VE messaging via phone lines, VPN or the internet.

The project technical aims are: