The report organizes the AR Smart Glasses Market across the globe into distinct portion based on industry standards. It also distinguishes the market based on geographical regions.

AR Smart Glasses Market report analyzes the market at global and regional level. The AR Smart Glasses market focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer. The market has been forecasted based on revenue, market share and growth rate from 2018 to 2025.

Key players in the report include Sony, Google, Microsoft, Epson, Toshiba, Qualcomm, Recon, Vuzix and Upskill, the last two of which are members of the AREA alliance.

Please note The AREA is not affiliated with any of the market report producers and very occasionally shares information that may be of interest to some of our wide and varied readership.

“While most shippers, brokers, carriers, vendors, and warehouse operators will agree that the logistics industry is awash in emerging technologies, Gartner said its study focuses only on those trends that have substantial disruptive potential that is beginning to break out of an emerging state into broader impact and could reach a tipping point over the next five years.”

Viewed through that prism, Gartner says the ten strategic technology trends that organizations need to explore in 2019 are:

• Autonomous things (robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles will increasingly exhibit advanced behaviors that interact more naturally with their surroundings and with people)
• Augmented analytics (an area of augmented intelligence using machine learning (ML) instead of data scientists to automate the process of data preparation, insight generation, and insight visualization)
• AI-driven development (creating AI-enhanced solutions using predefined models delivered as a service, and assigning AI co-developers to help humans with application development projects)
• Digital twins (digital representations of real-world entities or systems that can help users apply analytics and rules to respond to business objectives)* Empowered edge (the collection and processing of data directly at the endpoint devices used by people or embedded in the world around us, instead of at centralized servers)
• Immersive experience (how conversational platforms such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) can change the way people perceive the digital world)
• Blockchain (a distributed ledger that can enable trust, provide transparency, and reduce friction across business ecosystems)
• Smart spaces (physical or digital environments in which humans and technology-enabled systems interact in increasingly open, connected, coordinated and intelligent ways)
• Digital ethics and privacy (how peoples’ personal information is being used by organizations in both the public and private sectors)
• Quantum computing (a type of nonclassical computing that operates on the quantum state of subatomic particles and can handle problems too complex for traditional approaches or algorithms)

While Gartner identified these trends as general, industry-wide themes, each one could apply specifically to logistics in a range of ways, the firm said.

Specific examples are given to conclude the article, the original of which can be read here.

An extract from the Abstract follows:

The capability of Augmented Reality (AR) technology to track and visualize relations of objects in space has led to diverse industry applications to support complex engineering tasks. Object assembly is one of them. For an AR aid to support Ready-to-Assemble (RTA) furniture particularly, the challenge is to effectively design the visual features and mode of interaction, so that the first-time users can quickly conceive spatial relations of its parts.

However, AR developers and engineers do not have sufficient guidelines to achieve such performance-driven goals. The scientific evidence and account of how one could cognitively benefit in object assembly can be useful to guide them. This experimental research developed an Augmented Reality (AR) application on the Microsoft HoloLens™ headset, and tested it on the first-time users of RTA furniture. The controlled experiments and behavioral analyses of fourteen participants in working out the two RTA furniture with different assembly complexity showed that, the application was effective to improve spatial problem-solving abilities.

The full article contains the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Related works
3. AR application: a design and development for cognitive support
4. Experimental design and test methods
5. Statistical analyses of the effects of using augmented reality
6. Discussions and conclusion

The full article may be accessed here.

Some of the key concepts from the article include:

Training and certification through AR pays for the creation of content in a new way but delivers savings straight to the bottom line.

There are a broad number of use cases here, but it boils down to saving money, saving time and improving safety:

• Knowledge transfer
• Empowering new works
• Save on travel costs
• Mitigate risk

The value of AR is directly tied to its ability to impact human workforce experience and performance and the three critical questions to ask before adopting AR pilots.

A good example of a real-world recent application of AR in supply chain is in warehouse picking and packing. A number of major companies have seen significant improvement in order fulfilment by as much 30% to 40%, providing warehouse workers with optimized vision picking directions and locations in line of sight.

We spoke to Stephen Tulip, Membership Development Manager – South West, who said:

“I’m delighted to announce that EEF has joined the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).

The adoption of AR technology is crucial to the progress of the 4th Industrial Revolution.  I’m really looking forward to working with AREA and its members to demonstrate the benefits of Augmented Reality to manufacturing businesses.

From revolutionising training to doing away with bulky instruction manuals, businesses are already seeing real increases in productivity from this emerging technology.”

About EEF:

Everything we do, from business support to championing manufacturing and engineering in the UK and the EU, is designed to help our industry thrive, innovate and compete locally and globally. We work with and for a whole range of people, including industry leaders, managers, professional staff, apprentices, policy-makers, and the media. No matter their size or field, EEF members are supported by our array of tools, campaigning and business support services. We believe in UK manufacturing and its contribution to the economy and community.

We’ll be publishing more news soon about benefits for members of our partnership and about collaborative events coming up.  Look out for details!

The largest category of respondents in the survey group came from the technology (30 percent) and manufacturing (20 percent) industries.

A couple of highlights they shared with us include:

* Enterprises were asked “when do you believe AR will reach widespread adoption in your organization” – and 70 percent said that they expect it will happen in their organization within the next three years.

* When asked which devices their organization would use to deliver AR solutions – more than half of those surveyed did not just pick a single platform.In fact, 57.69 percent of all respondents said they expect to deliver enterprise AR solutions on mobile devices (ie. tablets and smartphones) first and then offer them on smartglasses.

Read the full details on the research results here.

Augmented reality (AR) is quickly becoming mainstream as enterprises including Boeing, Caterpillar and others are seeing the benefits of using AR to transform their field operations.

The maturing and integration of smart glasses, wireless communication, mobile devices and augmented reality software is opening up new solutions to age-old problems that utility operations managers and their field crews encounter every day, such as:

–          An expansive set of field assets that make it difficult for field technicians to be experts with all equipment, increasing maintenance time and exposing potential safety challenges

–          Lack of time and qualified inspectors to complete the number of required inspections

–          Safety risks due to lack of experience with the broad array of tools and assets

–          Pressure to reduce costs while improving restoration times

–          Inability to easily record field work for further evaluation, inspection, and training

–          Loss of institutional knowledge due to retirements or attrition.

Other discussion topics within the article:

• How does the integration of emerging technologies, centred around AR, solve these issues?
• What an ideal solution should offer
• Integration
• Supportability
• Security
• How to successfully implement the solution

The worker pictured wears the HMT-1 helmet by RealWear, one of our alliance members at The AREA.

CCS Insight noted that the increasing market size would be propelled by the solid demand for smartwatches, stating that growth would be driven by the popularity of new ranges of Apple Watches in particular.

One of the most significant factors driving purchases of the Apple Watch and the wearables market overall is that wearables can be used to easily and conveniently track health.

Apple’s Series 4 watches have several health-tracking features such as an electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor which can measure heartrate and rhythm.

“For millions of people around the world, Apple Watch has helped them to stay connected, be more active and live a healthier day,” stated Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Wearables are being used to track a range of health concerns, from Fitbits counting the number of steps taken that day to individuals with diabetes using them to measure their glucose levels, a new feature of the recent Apple Watch Series.

According to Research and Markets, the medical wearable devices market is expected to reach more than $14.4bn by 2022, a huge portion of the $27bn market value CCS Insight has predicted overall.

“Now is a great time to find out what our world-class network of Catapult centres can do for your business. In August, the Chancellor announced an additional £780m funding for the Catapults, to help innovative businesses create future technologies.

This built on the £180m announced for the North East by the Prime Minister for the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and the Centre for Process Innovation, part of the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult.

This significant announcement means the Catapults can build on their success and continue helping thousands of businesses across the UK to undertake innovative R&D. This long-term investment will mean the Catapults can help deliver the Grand Challenges of the Industrial Strategy in their sectors and help the UK achieve its ambition to raise investment in R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

In their first five years the Catapults have supported around 3,000 small businesses to develop and exploit new technologies. They operate more than £850m-worth of world-class facilities and are also training hundreds of apprentices and doctoral students. A shining example is the HVM Catapult, where in the last year 900 apprentices have gained invaluable practical experience with cutting-edge technologies used in modern manufacturing.

The Chancellor made the announcement during a visit to the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, which is part of the HVM Catapult. He met with apprentices and workers who specialise in automation and machining.”

Photo MTC: Gurpreet Ghataore, research engineer at the Manufacturing Technology Centre, demonstrates a mobile platform with an integrated 6-axis robot arm capable of autonomously navigating through an active workshop environment to Philip Hammond MP and Neil Rawlinson & Alex Stephenson (both MTC).

Read the full article here.

Topics covered in the summary:

• Ori Inbar’s traditional State of XR keynote
• Mike Campbell of PTC priorities for achieving AR at scale in the enterprise (especially manufacturing and service where AR has the greatest value)
• Juergan Lumera of Bosch and Wolfgang Stelzle of RE’FEKT on their joint journey to take a platform for delivering information to service techs from prototype to global roll-out.
• XR-enabled training seemed to be a key area for large-scale industrial XR deployments
• Tim Merel, Digi-Capital research with AWE – keytakeaways
• Dr. Fadi Chehimi of IBM
• Object Theory’s Michael Hoffman
• M. Pell and Charlie Fink
• Kornelius Brunner and Andreas Haizmann of TeamViewer

Finally the panel conversations from the day were covered.

The full roundup article is well worth a read for quick takeaways from this hugely inspiring and successful event.