Bitstars Introduces holobuilder, a New AR Experience Authoring Platform
At the 2015 INFORMATIK conference there was high emphasis on Industry 4.0 topics. One of the papers presented by bitstars and published in the conference proceedings features the holobuilder platform. Contrary to what the name may suggest, this hosted platform is not designed for use with Microsoft HoloLens. It is an Augmented Reality experience authoring environment.
Based on WebGL, holobuilder produces experiences that, once the “holo player” is loaded, can run in a web browser and on any device.
The paper goes on to evaluate holobuilder against the six design principles for Industry 4.0. According to the authors:
- Interoperability: holobuilder supports interoperability on two levels of abstraction. First, the platform enables machine-to-machine communication through OPC UA. Second, holobuilder itself has been realized as a web app running in any modern web browser. Hence, any appropriate mobile device can be used to monitor machines in a corresponding holobuilder-based AR scenario.
- Virtualization: Since the platform enables the use of AR in smart factories, it clearly fuses the physical and the virtual world. Moreover, it leverages the advantages of OPC UA for monitoring physical processes by communicating with the monitored machines.
- Decentralization: holobuilder supports the decentralization of smart factories since, e.g., interactive instruction manuals can be created separately for each machine (optionally with OPC UA capabilities). This facilitates decentralized monitoring and maintenance.
- Real-Time Capability: AR scenarios such as interactive instruction manuals are applied in real time since the corresponding machine is viewed live through a camera. Also, in the case of an OPC UA–enabled holobuilder project, machine parameters are communicated in real time.
- Service Orientation: Projects created with holobuilder are not specific to a machine and factory. That is, as long as the same marker is being detected by the platform, interactive instruction manuals and OPC UA–enabled projects can be applied across different smart factories. Also, holobuilder itself is a general platform not bound to any particular context. It can be used in any smart factory with any appropriate mobile device.
- Modularity: The platform supports modular systems in smart factories, as it simplifies the process of adding, changing and monitoring individual components of machines.