EPRI is proud to collaborate with the AREA on the first ever Augmented Reality in Leading-Edge Utilities (ARLU) this July, where we will lead the industry to discern a disruptive technology and anticipate and solve issues through collaborative effort. In fact, ours is the only industry we know of where Augmented Reality as a disruptive innovation is being openly discussed. This isn’t going unnoticed.  Other industries are pointing at utilities and saying “Hey, look what they’re doing.”  Utilities are rarely perceived as having an active role in exciting new trends.

Three in One

The ARLU event is, in fact, three events in one.  First, it’s a meeting where EPRI and utilities industry representatives will present their Augmented Reality research and projects to vendors developing applications for the utility industry.  Vendors will see where utilities are placing emphasis in their development efforts and learn about the issues they‘re encountering.  Requirements such as size, weight and battery life of wearable technologies will be explored through the presentations, and will impart to participants a deeper understanding of the issues facing introduction of Augmented Reality in utilities.

Next, vendors will present their latest technologies for immediate feedback from industry experts. Not all technologies fit every utility situation and discussions around fit for purpose of presented technologies will be lively and informative. Finally, a workshop on gaps in existing standards will bring multiple perspectives to the problems of creating safe, comfortable and interoperable AR experiences in the utility space. 

Thought Leaders

Having subject matter experts together in one room is the one of the key objectives of this meeting. As we’ve been preparing the ARLU event, we’ve invited some of the brightest people in the utilities and utilities software industry to mix with thought leaders in Augmented Reality. We expect that the impact will last much longer than the two days in July because new ideas will emerge in the weeks and months that follow as the participants who meet in Charlotte continue to develop relationships.

We expect to capture some of the ideas these thought leaders generate and to share the outcomes of discussions with the broader community so that many others can also benefit.

Time is Right

We feel this is the right time for such a conference. Today, judging a technology for what it can do right now is the wrong way to look at it.  Advances occur almost daily and it’s better to first define what’s needed to build a future state of the technology. That’s where Augmented Reality is today. Practical applications are just now being introduced but an explosion of functionality is coming. By the time the average person notices the ubiquity of Augmented Reality, many of the issues we are going to discuss in Charlotte will already have been settled.

Wearable technologies with Augmented Reality are at a stage where real utility applications are possible. At the same time, shifting demographics at utilities are bringing in younger, less experienced workers—as older, more practiced workers are leaving. There needs to be an orchestrated “changing of the guard” where institutional knowledge, gained by years of hard work and experience, is transferred to a younger, more tech-savvy generation. The technologies presented at ARLU will deliver remote expertise and put information at the fingertips of crews composed of less seasoned individuals.

The wise man says it’s better to act on a lightning flash than wait to hear the thunder. That’s why we planned this event in 2015 and look forward to seeing many of the readers of this blog at the first ARLU event.

Today Christine Perey, Executive Director of the AREA, interviews Bob Meads, CEO of iQagent and member of the AREA board. Bob is pioneering the use of mobile Augmented Reality on the plant floor to increase worker efficiency and safety.

Q. What is the level of interest in enterprise AR among people in your company?

The level of interest in this technology is high; however, we don’t like to put technology first. As I have written about previously, AR is a great fit for plant floor challenges. But using AR (or any technology) for its own sake is a flawed approach if you want to sell a product. We identify the problems we want to solve, and fit the best technology to solve them elegantly. The litmus test of a great AR solution is at first you don’t notice it’s an AR solution. Your attention is captured by the system’s usefulness and applicability to the problem it addresses. The realization that it uses AR comes as an afterthought.

Q. How does your company, group or team plan to make an impact in enterprise Augmented Reality?

We plan to bring to the enterprise market mobile apps that solve real problems, in keeping with our “practical” approach to Augmented Reality.

Q. In your opinion, what are the greatest obstacles to the introduction of AR in enterprise?

The three barriers we encounter most frequently are in adequate infrastructure, security issues and resistance to new technology. Using AR technology as part of a plant solution will overwhelmingly be issued on mobile devices. So the barriers to using mobile devices become barriers to using AR on the plant floor. It can be a big investment for a plant to create a wireless infrastructure that covers the plant floor well. Many plants also haven’t fully embraced the use of electronic documents versus paper ones, despite the obvious benefits. Mobile devices also tend to raise alarm bells with IT for many reasons. Then there is concern over ROI, that once the infrastructure is added, these new mobile devices and software will not actually be used or won’t provide a return on investment.

Q. Are you focused on a particular industry? If so please describe it, as well as the customers with whom you work.

While we serve most industries, automotive, chemical/pharmaceutical and food & beverage are where we focus. This is because these plants have lots of automation, and, therefore, lots of data and resources that the plant staff access on a daily basis. The ROI of our product, iQagent, is very dramatic for these kinds of plants.

Q. How do you characterize the current stage in enterprise AR adoption? What will it take to go to the next stage or to accelerate adoption?

In my opinion, AR technologies are still in the trough of the Gartner Hype Cycle, but slowly coming. The potential for enterprise AR concept to help workers visualize data and resources as they relate to real world equipment or processes in enormous. It limits the skillsets needed to perform adjustments or repairs, reduces human error, and lessens the need for training. It’s a giant win-win. So why isn’t it already in widespread use? Because AR solutions tend to be highly customized and developed for specific customers. This approach is expensive, introduces risk and extends the ROI for the customer. This is due, in part, to the lack of standards. The breakthrough for AR in the enterprise will come when there are more off-the-shelf AR solutions that are easy to integrate and deploy and provide obvious benefits and immediate ROI. Right now most AR products are toolkits because there are no AR standards out there. If standards were created and adopted, it would be easier for AR providers to create off-the-shelf solutions. This in turn reduces risk, lowers cost and provides a well-defined ROI for the customer.

Q. We’d like some historical context for your current role. How did you get interested in or develop your role in enterprise Augmented Reality?

I have been in industrial automation software and integration for 20 years, and have always loved technology. iQuest, my automation company, specializes in using different technologies to solve plant floor problems. When the iPad was released, we began looking for ways to leverage it on the plant floor. We started with identifying common problems we could solve with a mobile app, and then developed iQagent and the concept of “practical” augmented reality, or, in the words of Ars Technica, “Just Enough AR.”

Image courtesy of IQagent

This post was previously published on the DAQRI blog and posted here with permission.

As we head into Augmented World Expo 2015, we have seen this event grow and evolve alongside the industry. Within this last year, we’ve seen more mainstream conversations about Augmented Reality than ever before.  As a result of this increased focus, there is now more than ever, a need to support and encourage innovation in Augmented Reality and computer vision technologies.

This year, we are excited to be showcasing our products and to spotlight our recent acquisition of ARToolKit, the world’s most widely used augmented reality SDK.  By releasing ARToolKit professional SDKs under LGPL v3.0 for free use, DAQRI is committing its resources to the open source community in the hopes that (in the words of our founder, Brian Mullins), “we can kick off the next AR revolution and inspire a whole new generation to pick it up and make things that haven’t been imagined yet.”

On the exhibition floor, Ben Vaughan and Philip Lamb from ARToolworks will be available to discuss ARToolKit and DAQRI’s newly-created open source division that they are heading up. In addition, representatives from DAQRI will be demoing DAQRI 4D Studio and showcasing exciting technologies from Melon, our brain computer interface division.

DAQRI executives will also be presenting throughout the conference:

Monday, June 8:

• 10:45 am – 11:30 am—DAQRI 4D Studio Tutorial
  Katherine Wiemelt, Sr. Product Director, DAQRI
• 2:15pm – 3:00 pm—How to Measure Enterprise AR Impacts
  Andy Lowery, President, DAQRI

Tuesday, June 9:

• 11:30 am – 1:00pm—Smart Glasses Introductions
  Matt Kammerait, VP Product, DAQRI
• 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm—Entertainment, Games, and Play
  Brian Selzer, VP Business and Product Development, DAQRI
• 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm—Auggie Awards
  Brian Mullins, Founder and CEO, DAQRI

Wednesday, June 10:

• 2:45 pm-3:00 pm—From Evolution to Revolution: How AR will Transform Work, in the Future
  Brian Mullins, Founder and CEO, DAQRI

This article was originally published by AREA member NGRAIN on their company blog.

Augmented World Expo 2015 is just a week away, and with the recent news that Metaio may have just been bought out by Apple, it’s shaping up to be the most interesting AWE event yet.

Skeptics have been saying for years (or decades, for those really keeping count) that Augmented Reality applications, much like their VR siblings, are variously destined to be “niche” technologies, pipe dreams or simply impossible. The VR community is doing a great job of proving these skeptics wrong: Oculus, HTC and Valve are on the cusp of releasing VR headsets in the $300-400 range that will enable anyone to bring VR home. There is a critical mass of indie developers who are passionate about bringing VR experiences for the whole world to see, share and experience, and there are real VR apps, games and other experiences that people can download and use today, even if the hardware comes in the form of developer kits or roll-your-own cardboard.

You could say the AR community has been less successful. AR is more difficult to explain to the uninitiated (“it’s kind of like VR, but not”). The technologies needed to make compelling Augmented Reality experiences are arguably more challenging (real-time 3D object tracking, anyone?). And there’s an argument to be made that we, as an AR community, tend to over-promise and under-deliver—a quick browse through YouTube are AR marketing videos that present sci-fi’ed visions of the future with fantastic, magical wearable displays and free-hand gestural interactions that would have a place in any Hollywood summer blockbuster.

The skeptics can be forgiven if that’s what they think augmented reality is all about — as an AR community, there tends to be the default refrain that the future is going to be awesome, when it finally gets here.

If there is one thing that we can take away from this recent transaction between Apple and Metaio, it’s this: the future is now. And as a community, we owe it to ourselves to start thinking that way. It is true that key parts of the AR tech stack aren’t 100% robust. Wearable smart glasses present themselves as Atari-era in capability in a world with PS4/Xbox One-level expectations and there are very few tools out there to help AR content creators (shameless plug: here at NGRAIN, we do offer an AR content creation tool called NGRAIN Vergence that lets you create industrial AR content without having to write a single line of code). But as it is with any emerging technology, the goal can’t be to have a perfect technology, but rather one that suspends disbelief and serves its intended audience well.

In fact, there are enough parts of the AR tech stack that are available today to create compelling industrial applications or entertaining experiences. What we do at NGRAIN is a case in point: we already have customers who are bringing augmented reality to their businesses, from assessing vehicle damage in the maintenance yard to making crucial operational decisions in sub-zero temperatures. I will own up to the fact that the technology isn’t always where I wish it were, or that it doesn’t do everything I wish it did but it does plenty to deliver value to our customers, which is really the name of the game. And it all comes from focusing on the real problems—the ones our customers have—rather than the challenges we sometimes invent as a community (e.g. the “need” for high res optics, zero latency experiences or magically perfect object tracking and registration).

Coming back to that parallel in the VR world, it’s a certainty that the first generation of commercially available VR gear will not be everything to everyone, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be: it will be good enough for people to give it a try, get hooked, and look forward to the future with the confidence that the experiences will keep getting even better than they are today. This has every reason to hold true for those of us developing applications in the AR world as well.

Let’s get people excited about what’s possible today, rather than getting them to wait until tomorrow!

In a modern world everyone assumes that power recharges are just a “plug away.” Just plug your device into the next power outlet and your issues are over. Generating and distributing power isn’t magic. It’s an industry.  

Why Do You Care about EPRI?

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) works collaboratively with more than 450 utility provider members and participants internationally to identify or create the technologies that utilities will need to provide affordable, reliable, safe, efficient and environmentally responsible electric power to the world. By leveraging its research and membership, EPRI is helping utilities investigate the benefit of using AR-assisted workflows to improve worker safety and efficiency.

Why Does EPRI Care about the AREA?

Augmented Reality promises to change how electric utilities will operate in the future. Like in electric utilities, strong industry associations are necessary to promote and develop Augmented Reality technologies and standards to the point that they are productive and as easy to use as plugging your device into the socket.

Our experience with introducing new systems into electric utilities is that you can’t get from here to there, from nascent to mature industry, in a single step. You have to have partners and communities. New tools and techniques gleaned from AREA members in other industries can be applied to utilities, reducing the cost of technology implementation for our members in the near term, and the cost of generating and distributing electricity in the long run. Collaborating with AREA members will result in products that better serve the utility industry and the public.

Members of the AREA represent the thought leaders in an emerging technology that EPRI and its members think will be pivotal to increase efficiency and safety for workers among EPRI‘s utility membership.

EPRI is proud to be a Founding Sponsor member of the AREA. Joining AREA and getting it launched successfully is only the beginning.

Bringing Together the Best and the Brightest

In close partnership with AREA, EPRI is going to bring the AR vendor community closer to the utility vendor community.

As a first step, we are organizing a special two-day workshop to be held at the EPRI Charlotte office on July 27-28, 2015. The AREA members and other AR ecosystem stakeholders will present on their position in the market and technology. The utility customers will ask some tough questions about reliability, standards and security. They will go over the best use cases around workflow in the field and asset management.

In a matter of a few short days, these groups will be able to formulate better strategies for improving the operations of utilities without putting assets and people at risk.

We know that this is an important step towards bringing our two industries closer together. Join the AREA to learn the details of this special program and visit the event page for more information about AR in Leading-edge Utilities.

The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance offers a central platform for the Augmented Reality ecosystem to come together in a manner that fosters growth, collaboration and market awareness and development.

This is why the AREA is important for the IEEE as well as for everyone who will use AR in the future. Prior to the AREA, no one has focused on the enterprise AR value chain. In the AREA, those who provide AR solutions and components will improve their processes and products in partnership with their future customers, and customers will be fully engaged in the process of expanding this market.

The Diverse Viewpoints of AREA Members

The Founding Sponsor members of the AREA, including IEEE, seek to bring together the diverse perspectives of the AR value chain in order to provide opportunities for working through common pain points. The resolution of these points will result in a positive outcome for customers, end users and manufacturers. By fostering this level of growth, the AREA is an enticing forum for interested parties to jointly conduct research that supports their organizations’ performance.

Beyond research, the AREA affords its members the opportunity to gain inroads with other organizations that potentially offer them new solutions with diverse stakeholders.

Personally, I’m excited about the opportunity to increase our collective knowledge and educate the marketplace with respect to the impact that AR can have on their businesses’ and customers’ product quality and experiences. From the perspective of advancing technology for humanity, the IEEE Standards Association continues to explore new areas to support technologies that have the potential to impact the world in a positive manner. Augmented Reality offers this possibility in a very important way—and members of the AREA collaborate to show their support of the technology as well as to increase their voice in the market.

Complexity in Emergence

In addition to the benefits AR offers, there are aspects of AR introduction that will be difficult to overcome. The technology is no more immune to themes of cybersecurity, privacy, and identity than other interconnected technologies. Given the pervasive nature of these themes, it is natural that we will, at some point, need to tackle these complex techno-political questions together, as partners in equilibrium with end users.

While resolving cybersecurity, privacy and identity issues is not on the AREA docket in the immediate future, you can imagine the role the AREA will play in the future as an important actor in the AR ecosystem.

Your Role in the AREA

The AREA is now open to all classes of membership. Why should you join?

I encourage you to take a few moments to learn about the AREA’s value proposition to your company and customers. Reflect on how your value chain could benefit from having technology that increases workplace safety and product quality, while reducing manufacturing and operational costs and helping to streamline workflow processes.

Then ask yourself if your company had the chance to educate the market regarding the benefits of AR in the enterprise; would it benefit? What about the chance to be a part of collective, exploratory research that advanced the AR market? If you believe these questions make sense and your company needs to be at this table, then consider joining the IEEE and becoming an AREA member.

I look forward to meeting you at one of our many upcoming events and discussing the important issues that AREA members will be tackling for the benefit of humanity.

Portions of this article were published in SAP Startup Focus in its March 26 newsletter.

Since we began in this field in 2011, countless smart glasses prototypes, working samples and production units have passed through the APX R&D lab. Predating Google Glass, we had developed rapid prototyping capabilities to build smart glasses prototypes using available components. Having entered the smart glasses industry earlier than most, our early engineering efforts were broader than the enterprise software company we have become, with the nascent market necessitating a broader technical coverage spanning all aspects of hardware, software, user interface design, human-computer interaction methods and systems thinking. Dropping smart glasses device engineering and some of the low-level software from our core expertise subsequently opened a path for APX to do more with less. 

Large enterprises across the globe have spent many billions of dollars over decades to build out electronic knowledge bases of information needed to get work done. This means that mission critical data for the deskless and hands-on workforce already exists in the enterprise, and now the imperative is to enable a seamless, bidirectional flow of information between the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) ecosystem and users, while refining user interactions in a contextually aware and intuitive manner. Our Skylight product, an enterprise software platform for smart glasses, helps bridge the gap between enterprise information systems and smart glasses users in need of contextually relevant data, accessible heads up and hands free smart glasses.

Our skill today is in keeping up with rapidly changing technology. To illustrate how challenging this can be, let’s look back at the different hardware options available to the enterprise customer. I hope this visually guided tour of smart glasses marking milestone moments within APX’s history demonstrates how quickly technology has advanced in a short period of time, and brings excitement and anticipation for a diversifying ecosystem of emerging devices continuing the next industrial revolution driven by wearable technology.

US Army Smart Glasses, Multiple Generations (2011-2013)

Our company’s history goes back to when we were originally selected to build software for smart glasses used by the United States Army. The biometrics application, nicknamed Terminator Vision, used the onboard camera to capture faces within the soldier’s field of view, send the captured data to a server to determine the identity of the person(s) and display the information in a heads-up and hands-free manner to the user.

Advanced for its time in terms of delivering a fully embedded, single-device-does-all smart glasses solution, these smart glasses featured an end-to-end exchange of field-collected data from the user’s environment, which was analyzed by a back-end system and delivered to the user in real time.

Augmented Reality Smart Glasses Prototype (Late 2012)

In 2012 we broadened our software capabilities to address the non-military market targeting global companies with a deskless and hands-on workforce. We commissioned several prototypes to learn more about the nuances of the ideal hardware for enterprise smart glasses. The ones pictured above used two display modules, each containing a microdisplay, a rudimentary 50:50 beam splitter (light from the environment and the microdisplay are mixed evenly to create visible content to the user), and an illumination source. A 3D printed and painted frame for the headset was designed in-house along with the control module enclosure.

This particular prototype allowed us to experiment with different content presentation options (2D, ultrawide 2D and stereoscopic 3D modes), sensor payloads (visible and infrared camera, motion tracker, microphone, etc.) and computing platforms. It demonstrated there is no single perfect design covering all industrial scenarios and confirmed that enterprise smart glasses follow the same paradigm as all other tools used in the workplace—the right tools or glasses for the right job. 

Epson Moverio BT-100EC Prototype (February 2013)

For APX’s first prototype for the Epson Moverio BT-100, we added a 9-axis inertial measurement unit (accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer) coupled to an Arduino platform, along with a 5MP camera and microphone module enclosed in a 3D-printed module. This in turn was wired into a daughter board for Epson’s control unit containing a battery, a video signal converter, and a USB hub. Finally, we used an Android phone for additional control and management.

This prototype represented a milestone at APX—we  had the ability to produce devices inexpensively for our developers, partners and customers, albeit in a limited fashion (inexpensive at the time meant $3,000-5,000).

Made famous by coverage on and by demos at the YouTube Sandbox at Google I/O 2013, this cemented our presence in the industrial sector with one of the first Epson-derived prototypes. Essentially a functionally equivalent prototype to Epson’s BT-200 smart glasses released a year later, this was the first device APX prototyped in our partnership with Epson.

Google Glass (April 2013)

The release of Google Glass was a milestone for the smart glasses industry for many reasons, not least of which because one of the largest technology companies in the world had introduced a fully integrated smart glasses device at the relatively modest price of $1500. This sparked significant interest from startups, venture capital and large corporations. Overnight, smart glasses went from being exotic devices reserved for researchers and the military to publicly available goods.

The Glass product announcement in 2012 led to the acceleration of the development of and spurred others to take a deeper look at the nascent industry. Google’s entry had ripple effects in the hardware industry as well, considerably increasing the pace at which companies have introduced new devices since.

APX’s vision has always been that smart glasses will fundamentally transform the way the global workforce will build, fix and move goods, delivering enhancements in productivity, efficiency and safety. Glass’ innovations and the market presence it created represented an important step in that direction.

Glass of course has seen its ups and downs, recently bringing the consumer- and app developer-facing Explorer program to an end, but the Glass at Work program, of which APX was the founding partner in April 2014, continues to thrive.

Vuzix M100 (December 2013)

Vuzix is a very well-known name in the smart glasses industry, having developed see-through displays since 2005 (not surprisingly, also for the military). Its M100 product was the first industry-targeted generally available device, complete with an ANSI-rated safety glasses attachment, and has since paved the way alongside Google Glass in setting the standard of heads-up and monocular smart glasses.

APX and Vuzix have an official partnership with the M100 integrating the fourth release of Skylight and increasing the selection of devices available for enterprises to deploy across a diverse set of use cases.

Epson Moverio BT-200 (March 2014)

Epson’s second-generation Moverio product incorporates the sensors we had added to the BT-100EC prototype and are the first generally available stereoscopic see-through smart glasses. The device also integrates Skylight for industrial AR use cases such as two-way video conferencing and workflow information in the worker’s field of view.

These use cases were demonstrated live at SAP CEO Bill McDermott’s SAPPHIRE 2014 keynote address, marking a decisive change for smart glasses in enterprise, with the technology being publicly demonstrated by a major ERP player at its largest conference. With a suggested retail price of $699, the low cost of the device provided additional incentives for enterprises to pilot and experiment with the technology for their workplace scenarios.

Sony SmartEyeglass (February 2015)

Since early 2014, Sony has showcased several iterations of the SmartEyeglass concept at multiple industry conferences. At the 2015 Consumer Electronic Show, Sony, APX and SAP Startup Focus partnered together to demo an enterprise smart glasses solution. Sony provided the hardware for the smart glasses, SAP provided ERP data from Work Manager and HANA and APX’s Skylight furnished the user experience that extended the data to wearable devices. This combination enabled user-context awareness, mobile device management and information security rule enforcement, and brought advanced media to and from users equipped with smart glasses.

Recon Jet (March 2015)

Although the Jet smart glasses product from Recon Instruments is produced primarily for the sports industry, we believe its design balancing wearability, user comfort, function, robustness and price will have a positive influence on future smart glasses designs for enterprise. The Jet has attributes that are desirable for enterprise applications: a sleek and easily wearable design that can withstand harsh outdoor environments, consumer level pricing and availability, and an interchangeable lens design.

What’s Next?

In only four years, smart glasses technology has evolved from being a research prototype, limited in capability, availability and high cost to being broadly accessible, wearable and enterprise ready. We have seen growing interest from the largest global companies in building the connected workplace for their deskless and hands-on workforce, and we believe the market for smart glasses is just getting started.

Going back to the beginning of our product timeline, we initially invested heavily in smart glasses because we recognized their potential suitability to enterprise use cases. The latest version of our Skylight product is scalable, connects to enterprise data sources and supports commercially available models of smart glasses. We are also preparing for emerging trends that will interconnect smart glasses with other mobile devices. With smartwatches taking center stage in 2015, we are extending Skylight support to a growing wearable ecosystem.

We can’t be more excited, both by how far we’ve come and where we’ll go as the wearable market takes off in the enterprise.  We’re also very excited to work alongside an industry full of partners, customers, and research institutions as a founding member of the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).  The enterprise smart glasses market requires active participation of the full value chain of enterprise mobility.  Device manufacturers, software developers, system integrators, consulting agencies, academic and research institutions will all need to collaborate to deliver on the needs of customers.  There is an elevated sense of personalization that smart glasses and other wearable devices bring to users, and defining the optimized user experience will be a critical task for everyone in the industry.  While improving the user experience and capabilities of our own product line, we recognize that the evolution of the entire enterprise smart glasses value chain requires contributions from an entire industry.

The insights gathered from collaborating with other AREA members will help improve the quality of the experience for our customers, developers and partners.  APX is striving to work with fellow visionaries to accelerate the adoption of enterprise smart glasses technology, generating ripple effects much greater than the mere sum of the AREA members’ capabilities.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the old saying goes. Nowhere is that more true than where the enterprise is concerned. Intense competition, shrinking margins and the rising costs of doing business make for a demanding operating environment where even small mistakes can end up being costly in the bigger picture. The commercial aerospace market knows this all too well—cancellations and delays cost the industry $45 million per day. Similarly, a typical oil refinery in the energy sector could lose $800K per day due to improperly maintained processing equipment.

It used to be that slow and steady improvements in operational performance would win you the race—not so anymore. Now, just meeting expectations depends on improving bottom line performance 10x, 100x or even more. While there used to be room to improve in optimizing cost efficiency through process improvements alone, order-of-magnitude improvements demand investment in new disruptive technologies that will fundamentally transform how businesses operate.

Enter Augmented Reality

Here at NGRAIN, we see Augmented Reality (AR) as technology that ultimately maximizes the performance of people, machines, and the interactions between them. With companies across the Global 2000 in aerospace, defense, energy, manufacturing and healthcare using NGRAIN in the field today, we have seen firsthand the benefit that virtual and augmented capabilities can bring to the enterprise. Industrial applications that we have deployed are ensuring that specialists on the front line are getting more done than they ever could before. Our work with companies including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Microsoft are uncovering the incredible potential of AR, from providing on-the-job support on the manufacturing floor, to enabling the success of critical operations in the field, to keeping complex vehicles running and heavy equipment online.

It can be daunting to bring AR into your business—where do you start? Who do you talk to? Here’s what you can do today: 

1. Get in touch with the AREA. NGRAIN is a charter member of the AREA because we are committed to reducing the barriers to AR adoption across the enterprise, and the AREA provides a natural and mutually supportive network that can help you and your organization get on the path to learning more about AR and the value it can bring to your business. 

2. Download some software and give AR a try. It’s easy to get started with industrial AR. There is a growing number of off-the-shelf software applications you can use to quickly experience AR on a mobile device, tablet, or even wearable smart glasses such as the Epson Moverio. NGRAIN offers a commercial product called Vergence, which provides a straightforward, but feature-rich introduction to creating your own AR experiences without having to write any code or invest in the development of custom software. 

3. Attend an AR conference. One of the best ways to evaluate the application of industrial AR within your organization is to learn from the experiences of others who are activley involved in the deployment of these technologies; most are eager to share their knowledge about this emerging space. Consequently, the growing interest in enterprise AR has resulted in a host of conferences, trade shows, and events that focus on the use of AR in industrial markets. Though not focusing exclusively on enterprise AR, the annual Augmented World Expo (AWE), now in its sixth year, draws thousands of attendees who share an interest in bringing AR to market and is a great way to get connected with the broader AR community. For those interested in an event focused entirely on enterprise and industrial AR, join the AREA members at the ARise ’15 event at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in Sheffield, UK on July 1, 2015. A quick online search will also yield a significant number of results for events segmented by industry and interest.

Now is a great time to be exploring the potential of AR for your business. The technology is accessible and a thriving community and active developer ecosystem we quickly emerging. Most importantly, the barrier to entry is declining and is as easy as reaching out and having a conversation. We look forward to being in touch!

Much has been made recently of how Augmented Reality will soon merge our digital lives with our real ones, bestowing new powers to our social and working existence. Recent advances in technology have lulled us into believing that AR in the workplace is just around the corner. Many of us have looked forward to high-tech glasses, watches and other wearables finally delivering that promise, inspired by viral YouTube videos (here, and here ) showing workers wearing glasses with full field of vision AR displays. However, this has yet to materialize.

The recent withdrawal of Google Glass and the general failure of wearables to meet expectations have influenced public perception of enterprise AR as falling rapidly from Gartner, Inc.’s Peak of Inflated Expectations into the Trough of Disillusionment. 

AR Is a Natural Fit for Solving Plant Floor Challenges

Gartner has pigeonholed AR technology into the digital marketing niche. This is possibly the result of highly visible and successful AR brand engagement campaigns, such as for sports teams, automobile companies and even business-to-business marketing. The Augmented Reality feature provided in the IKEA catalog companion application demonstrates how AR can be useful as well as drive consumer brand engagement. These campaigns and useful applications primarily address the outward-facing communication needs of the brands and are measured in terms of greater sales or customer loyalty.

Turning towards business operations, those of us involved in the manufacturing and automation field see AR as a way to address many plant floor challenges. Here are a few examples of common plant floor issues, which we believe are a natural fit for enhancement with mobile AR.

Table: Potential AR Solutions to common plant floor problems

It’s very tempting for an engineering team to develop an eye-catching AR application for a demonstration and to suggest that the technology also easily addresses more complex problems. These solutions are usually implemented by experts using software toolkits, rather than implementing commercial off-the-shelf software. The final implementations delivered for the customer are usually highly customized. In these cases, ROI is difficult to define. iQagent’s approach to solving plant floor problems with AR involves first focusing on the problems to be solved, and then defining a good mobile AR solution to address the challenge.

Interventions are Collaborative Endeavors

One challenge we address is #4 from the table above: technical resources required to evaluate and efficiently respond to unplanned downtime events are not available in real time.

Production downtime costs are often measured in hundreds or thousands of dollars per minute. When a production line goes down, the operator must communicate with remote technical resources in order to get production running again quickly. One factor preventing effective communication is the education gap between the operator and engineer; operators aren’t engineers, and engineers aren’t used to operating the equipment through all phases of the process. Each has specialized technical and procedural knowledge that can contribute to a solution, but traditional channels such as phone, text or e-mail aren’t perfect tools for collaboration. The operator must decide which details are important to convey to the engineer, and the engineer must find the right questions to ask in order to get a clear picture of the problem. Due to the prohibitive cost of production downtime, this effort has a very small window in which to be effective. At some point, the decision must be made to get the human resource on-site in order to return the line to normal production.

We then considered why engineers and operators are more efficient in resolving production downtime issues when collaborating in person. The operator can directly show the problem to the engineer, referring to live process values and performance indicators relevant to the process from the local automation system. The engineer can analyze the problem in real time, asking the right questions of the operator in order to resolve the problem.

A successful mobile solution duplicates the benefits of in-person collaboration, allowing each participant to effectively contribute their specialized knowledge to a common view of the process, including live data and operational details from the automation systems that are relevant to the problem.

This particular solution is a great fit for AR-enhanced software on a mobile device.

Augmented Reality with iQagent

iQagent uses the device’s video camera to identify a unique piece of equipment by scanning a QR code. The software overlays relevant process values and associated data on the camera’s displayed video feed, which can also be recorded as a snapshot or video. This provides a common view of the process required. Operators can also annotate directly on the images or video, making notes and drawing attention to areas of interest for the engineer to analyze, in effect “showing” the problem. When finished, the user saves and e-mails the video to the remote technician, who now has a much more complete picture of the problem, and in many cases, can resolve the issues more efficiently.

We feel iQagent is a great solution to some common plant floor challenges. But having a great product isn’t an end but a beginning. To make any product a success, you have to get it in front of users who need it, and you must support and continually improve the product. This is why we joined the AR for Enterprise Alliance. The AREA enables us to collaborate with other like-minded AR solution providers, end users and customers. Through education, research and collaboration, we will help to move AR out of the Trough of Disillusionment, up the Slope of Enlightenment and onto the Plateau of Productivity.

Augmented Reality (AR)-enabled systems show a mechanic how to repair an engine, or perhaps in the future will guide an inexperienced surgeon in a delicate heart operation. In my opinion, it’s when AR is combined with human collaboration that the magic begins. AR will soon work its way into a variety of applications that are bound to improve our lives, but more importantly, I am convinced it’s to become a catalyst for greater human understanding and world peace.

Augmented Reality Can Bring Us Closer

Everyone’s heart raced when Jake Sculley, the wheel chair-bound Marine in the movie Avatar, first connected his thoughts to those of his avatar, walked and then ran. His mission was to infiltrate the society of the natives, learn their customs and, having gathered that information help destroy their world. Of course, we all know how the story ends…It’s difficult to do harm to those we know. The first step in Hitler’s campaign to eliminate those he considered unworthy was to convince his followers that the others were less than human. In fact, this is a universal technique involved in incitement to violence against another group. It is only when we finally get to know someone that, even if we don’t agree, we can begin to understand and care about them.

Sharing Experiences

AR allows a user to see an enhanced view of reality, placing graphic images and 3D models over the real background. This will be great for building and repairing things by ourselves, but when we combine that capability with modern telecommunications, remote users will be able to participate in those processes with local users in real time, and appear to the wearer of the glasses as if standing alongside them. We won’t just see our grandkids in a Skype screen; we will take them with us on new adventures around the world or in our backyard. An astronaut in space will literally see the hand of the equipment specialist on earth pointing to the board to be replaced as they speak.

Gutenberg changed the world because the printed page could easily display the manuals that apprentices used for learning the trades that freed them from the fields. Radio and then television added sound, motion and recently 3D to the flood of information. Telecommunications has brought the cost of distributing it to practically zero. Now AR combines these capabilities and creates an infinite number of parallel worlds that you may create and visit, as well as acquire skills in from one-on-one instruction. It’s the closest thing to teleportation this side of Star Trek.

Non-verbal communication is said to account for between 55 and 97% (depending on the study) of communication between people. AR will provide practically the same information due to its enabling of “belly to belly” proximity. You will be able to virtually sit in a conference room and interact with other remote participants, watch a theater performance in your living room or tag along with a friend on an exotic trip to a foreign land. That friend will be able to see you, too.

New Ways of Displaying Information

Talk about disruptive. This is downright neutron bomb material. Why do you need a laptop or tablet when you see the screen suspended in mid-air, with the glasses projecting a keyboard on any surface? Gone are large-screen TVs, when everyone sat stationary watching the game from the same angle. Why wouldn’t they prefer it in perfect 3D? Forget glass cockpits in airplanes; why not have all the instruments projected in your field of view? How about infrared images of deer or pedestrians in fog or at night shown on the windshield of your car, to avoid hitting them in time?

Augmented Reality and Collaboration

But, again collaboration use cases will take the cake. The level of empathetic bonding that occurs when you’re in the room with another person will make current social messaging seem like sending smoke signals. Professionals in other countries will virtually know you and work together on projects as I am proposing using the Talent Swarm platform. Along with such proximity-enabled work will come a better understanding of other countries and cultures.

Collaboration is key, but it can’t happen at scale if everyone needs to buy and use exactly the same hardware and software. Collaboration across networks and companies as diverse as the places where humans live and work builds upon deep interoperability. Interoperability with existing and future systems will require a globally agreed-upon set of open standards. We will work within the AREA to strongly advocate for interoperable systems and push for global standards together with other AREA members. Once we have collaborative AR platforms, the benefits of this technology will rapidly serve all people of the world. Becoming an AREA founding sponsor member is, for Talent Swarm, not only common sense, but putting a stake in the ground, demonstrating our leadership for a more productive and peaceful world. We will avoid embarking on another wasteful battle such as VHS vs. Beta, nor allow a single company to reduce the opportunities or lock others out. Christine Perey, Executive Director of AREA, refers to it as our mandate: to ensure that an ecosystem of AR component and solution providers is in harmony with the customers’ needs, and able to deliver the diversity and innovation upon which economic success is based.

Path to the Future

With a concerted group goal centered on the advancement of AR, and with many technological developments both in the works and being introduced at an increasingly fast pace, we will one day look back to 2015 and say, how did we ever get along without Augmented Reality?