Reseach on technology development actuality of the virtual reality applied to design& manufacturing processes

The opinion that technology can dispiace a person to a different environment without any physical movement and create the illusion of interaction with the artificial environment is not new. Engineers and scientists have been dedicating their efforts to its progressive development over the last sixty years. However, most of the technological advances have been made in the last twenty years, At present, virtual reality is completely applied in different fields, such as robotics telemedicine, or cinematography. Following on from this success, the question arises of whether we have plan to apply it to industrial design and manufacturing processes. Rapid evolution of this technology applied to CAD/CAM over the last twenty years, together with the lack of recent reviews on it, have been the basic motivations to develop this study.