Smart glasses for Construction Industry
A recent article by Matt Alderson titled “3 Ways Smart Glasses Cleared a Path for Tunnel and Concourse Construction at LAX” on RedShift explains how Augmented Reality smart glasses can be used with great effect in the construction industry.
Tunnel vision—focusing on a single objective while remaining blind to peripheral risks and opportunities—can make even the steadiest projects sway. Especially when those projects take place in, well, tunnels, where tunnel vision is as literal as it is figurative.
Aviation firm Corgan discovered this firsthand at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) as the lead design firm creating the new Midfield Satellite Concourse (MSC) for the international terminal. The construction of the $1.6 billion project, which began in early 2017, includes a 750,000-square-foot concourse, utility tunnel, and passenger tunnel connecting the existing Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT). The tunnels span about a quarter mile and also house a new baggage-handling system.
Project manager Monica Sosa felt that Corgan would benefit from using DAQRI Smart Glasses, portable augmented-reality (AR) glasses that layer digital information on top of the physical environment, to visualize 3D models alongside the build construction. The glasses also provide remote work assistance, which benefits the architect, owner, consultants, and stakeholders who are not available to walk the site.
Sosa obtained funding from Corgan Create, an internal committee tasked with seeding the company’s innovation. She also acquired a Matterport 3D camera, which captures 360-degree scans at 4K resolution and overlays them onto geometric information to create high-resolution 3D models.
This article explains the process of how the new technologies were used to help the construction project by using AR smart glasses, presenting each step of the construction process.