AREA Research Committee Issues Call for Proposals to Study 3D Asset Usage in Enterprise AR

The AREA seeks to receive proposals for a funded research project that will examine barriers to and recommend approaches for using existing enterprise 3D assets in AR experiences delivered to employees. The project will also test the ingestion and use of enterprise 3D assets in a set of suitably limited but representative environments.

Organizations with relevant expertise in the research topic may respond to the invitation on or before 12 PM Eastern Daylight Time on April 1st.

Industry Context for the Research

One major barrier to widespread adoption of AR in enterprises is that developer toolkits and frameworks currently in use and engines for AR delivery do not accept or cannot automatically use the most common existing enterprise 3D assets. For the many organizations with businesses built around 3D data this is a significant obstacle.

When 3D assets are generated/captured or designed, they meet requirements of their specific use cases in terms of complexity, level of detail, and additional related data. These requirements are independent of AR system requirements.

For use in current AR engines and to be rendered on AR display devices with limited memory and computing resources, 3D assets “as designed” (i.e., for purposes other than AR) frequently require some manipulation. In many cases, simplification of 3D assets using pure geometry-based algorithms does not produce optimal outcomes. For example, for lightweight use of 3D models in AR experiences, models need to be tessellated. However, once the complexity of the model has been reduced, there may be loss of embedded domain information.  Linking such information to the simplified geometry is another challenge.

In some industries and use cases, direct manipulation of 3D assets is forbidden or prohibitively expensive. This means that leveraging those 3D assets already available in the customer organization for AR-enabled delivery of information or instructions is expensive and, in many cases, not possible.

The lack of “dynamic” or direct 3D asset ingestion interfaces or processes drives up total cost of AR introductions, use/ownership and time (e.g., ROI) in enterprise.

Project Goal

The AREA seeks to provide members with knowledge and resources that will reduce the cost and time necessary to reuse existing enterprise 3D assets in their AR authoring, publishing, and delivery systems.

Fixed Fee Project

The AREA Research Committee budget for this project is $15,000. Organizations interested in conducting this research for the fixed fee are invited to submit proposals.

More information

Full information on the project needs, desired outcomes and required components of a winning proposal, including a submission form, can be found here.

If you have any questions concerning this project and the AREA Research Committee, please send an email to the Research Committee.