CATER - Computerised Automotive Technology Reconfiguration System for Mass Customization
CATER is an initiative involving key players from the EU and Asian automotive field to deliver integrated systems for mass vehicle customisation. CATER aims to provide automotive companies with a suite of ICT tools including VR interfaces for product design and manufacturing.
The Human Factors Research Group (HFRG) has two functions in CATER:
- First, to analyse CATER user requirements. Detailed knowledge elicitation, including scenario-based concept evaluation, is used to capture customer needs and expectations for VR interfaces to support vehicle customisation during the automotive development process (product planning, design and marketing) and point of sale.
- The second function is to design the CATER ontology. The ontology acts as a common framework, through which the CATER tools communicate, by providing a shared semantics for all CATER tools.
The CATER initiative is supported by the European Commission (FP6-IST-5-034245).