A team from Bosch Termotecnologia has been distinguished with the international Bosch award – the Bosch Digital X-PERIENCE Awards 2025 – focused on User Experience (UX). The winning project was developed in close collaboration with researchers from IEETA – Institute of Electronic Engineering and Informatics of Aveiro, under the scope of the ILLIANCE agenda.

The award-winning work, led by Duarte Almeida (from the Bosch Termotecnologia team) and Paulo Dias (from the University of Aveiro team), resulted in the Virtual Plant Visits (VPVs) system. This system uses Augmented Reality to enable virtual and remote visits to factory environments.

The VPVs technology was developed in partnership with the Virtual and Augmented Reality group (VARLab) at IEETA and offers key benefits:

• Streamlines and Optimizes Processes: Facilitates requirements gathering and information sharing among the various teams involved.
• Reduces Costs and Errors: Contributes significantly to the optimization of restructuring processes.

The VPV system transforms Augmented Reality into a collaborative visualization environment, allowing global teams to collaborate with a contextual clarity close to what they would have if they were physically together on the factory floor.

The Impact of this award is reflected in the Numbers from the Bosch Digital X-PERIENCE Awards 2025:

• 78,000 views across all submissions.
• 8,555 community votes.
• 96 innovative projects submitted.
• Countless hours of travel time saved.

The excellence of the VPV project was recognized at an event that demonstrated Bosch Digital's strong commitment to user experience. This innovation, developed under the ILLIANCE project, is revolutionizing how Bosch collaborates across its global manufacturing network.