The article then runs through the process a business would need to take in making decisions about where to start with the technology and how to progress through the journey.

To start with, it’s all about defining the most appropriate use cases around your existing business processes- and not trying to create problems to solve. It’s also about not fully buying in to the media hype that surrounds the technology, you need to make sure that your use cases are appropriate for today’s technologies. This will help align your business with the correct device and the correct ‘reality’.

Even if a suitable use case has been identified, you still need to get support from across your organisation. People need to be open to trying and using the different devices and types of reality, and thinking about how they could be used within various departments. It’s essential to get people on board in terms of buy-in. In engineering and manufacturing, many existing processes are so well established that even the slightest change to the status quo could cause resistance.

In the early stages it is best to be open minded and realistic as to what you want to achieve, and from a technology standpoint, be device agnostic. Today, nobody really knows which devices are best, or which will win out over time. New devices are appearing all the time and in 12 months’ time the next generation of devices will have hit the market.

So ultimately, the things you need to think about are:

• Don’t fully buy in to the media hype
• Be realistic as to what’s possible today-it will be different in 12 months’ time
• Define your use cases
• Don’t create problems to solve
• Get internal support
• Make sure you have infrastructure to support the devices
• Experiment with all devices – see which would suit your needs best. The type of device you choose will dictate the type of ‘reality’.
• Think short-term ROI as this market is new and evolving rapidly.

Although investing in new technologies like this can seem like a risk to begin with-especially if you’re not sure how they will fit in to your workplace-using AR, MR and VR in engineering and manufacturing workflows is gradually becoming more mainstream, and is changing the way people are working for the future- will you get left behind?

Chevron is betting these augmented reality devices will save the company millions of dollars in the coming years as it ramps up its use of Microsoft’s HoloLens technology, which was recently developed to support the sort of remote assistance functions now in use in El Segundo. The company this year nearly doubled its inventory to include more than 110 sets, which it’s now rolling out across its many business units to reduce operational downtime and improve productivity.

Ultimately, the company expects the technology to cut down on miles traveled among its specialists around the world. The company operates in more than 100 countries, and some of its facilities are especially remote.

“We have some experts that travel a half-million miles a year,” said Ed Moore, Chevron’s enterprise architecture and strategy manager. “There’s a lot of opportunity to make savings.”

Chevron’s rollout comes as oil and gas companies across the board look to adopt Silicon Valley technologies to improve efficiency as they heed the lessons of frugality taught by a two-year oil bust and face increasing competition from electric vehicles and renewable power sources.

Tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are marketing their cloud services to the oil and gas sector, and a host of startups are courting energy companies with applications using artificial intelligence and data science.

For the wearer, the HoloLens goggles project an interactive screen showing not only the video call, but also documents and mark-ups from the expert dialed in from afar. With thumbs and forefingers clicking in the air — sort of like air guitar for computers — users can pull up files and scroll through them while working on a project or repair.

By the end of the year, Moore expects more than half of the company’s facilities will have some form of the technology. He sees particular potential in deploying them on offshore rigs, which require helicopter charters and days of travel for engineers.

Right now, the technology doesn’t come cheap: Each set costs about $5,000. But the company estimates that international travel to its facilities costs between $5,000 and $12,000 a trip, and perhaps thousands of dollars more if the destination is particularly difficult to reach.

Read the full feature article from the Houston Chronicle.

SATS, the chief ground-handling and in-flight catering service provider at Singapore Changi Airport, started piloting the Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses to digitize its ramp handling operations in mid-2017 and is now completing phase 2 by introducing and deploying the technology to more than 500 staff at Changi Airport. Using Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses, SATS ramp handling staff will now be able to scan barcodes on baggage and cargo containers to improve the baggage handling process.

Ramp handling staff will also receive real-time loading instructions, which provides the ramp control center with a real-time view of on-ground processes. SATS expects to increase accuracy and improve efficiency of baggage and cargo handling processes for larger wide-body aircraft, by reducing loading times by up to 15 minutes per flight on average.

SGX-listed SATS provides services in 60 airports and 62 cities across Asia and the Middle East.  You may like to watch the two related videos:

What are AR smart glasses doing on Changi airport tarmac? Video link

SATS ramp handling with Augmented Reality. Video link

The group, led by first author Dr. Fatih Incekara from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, converted MRI scans of brain tumor patients into holograms and then overlaid these holograms directly onto the head of each patient using a type of augmented reality technology known as mixed reality. This allowed clinicians to visualize the brain and tumor of each patient right before surgery.

“This new technology proved to be pretty accurate when compared with the neuronavigation system,” Incekara told AuntMinnieEurope.com. “And surgeons reported an improved focus during surgery.”

Tumor localization

In recent decades, image-guided navigation technologies have proved highly practical and effective for use in complex neurosurgeries such as brain tumor removal, the authors noted. Current neuronavigation methods using these tools, however, are impeded by long setup times and require clinicians to repeatedly shift their gaze back and forth between 2D images on a screen and the patient.

Seeking to find a more intuitive way to plan tumor surgery, Incekara and colleagues turned to mixed reality technology — a variation of augmented reality that allows users to see and interact with virtual objects and their actual surroundings. They tested the feasibility of this approach in presurgical planning for the removal of brain tumors from 25 patients at their institution.

The group began by acquiring and then segmenting brain MRI scans of the patients. Next, they reconstructed 3D virtual models of the brain tumors with open-source software (Meshmixer, Autodesk) and used 3D-modeling software (Verto Studio) to make these virtual models compatible for use in a mixed reality device (Hololens, Microsoft).

Wearing a HoloLens headset, the neurosurgeons were able to merge the hologram of the patient’s brain and tumor with the physical head of the patient. This enabled them to determine the location of tumors and then mark the center and border of each tumor directly on the patient’s head. For comparison, the surgical team marked the center and border of the tumors on the patient’s head again, but this time using the standard neuronavigation method. They eventually removed the brain tumors based on measurements from the standard method.

Overall, the holograms of the tumor aligned well with the borders of the actual tumor. The clinicians were able to locate tumors using the mixed reality technique as precisely as they did with the conventional neuronavigation method in nine of the 25 patients (36%). The median deviation between the two techniques was 0.4 cm for the rest of the cases.

Furthermore, the surgeons claimed that using the mixed reality device during the operation enhanced their ergonomics, their understanding of the relationship between the tumor and the brain, and their attention and focus on the patient.

With the new technology, Colgate-Palmolive employees will be able to troubleshoot machinery while keeping their hands free to work and use their voice to engage with company subject matter experts (SMEs), equipment suppliers and manufacturing teams across sites for support and cross training.  In addition, Colgate-Palmolive plans to use the devices to retrieve and capture documents and video.

“Colgate-Palmolive tested RealWear HMT-1 through successful pilots in 8 locations and is now standardizing globally on this wearable device for our manufacturing operations,” said Warren Pruitt, VP Global Engineering at Colgate-Palmolive.  “Looking ahead, we see an opportunity to use this tool beyond the plant floor for improved performance and new efficiencies.”

“Colgate-Palmolive’s global deployment signifies that industrial wearable computing has crossed the chasm into mainstream manufacturing companies,” said Andy Lowery, RealWear CEO and cofounder. “This has been a textbook example of how to move with energy and purpose, from evaluation through pilot to global deployment.”

The commercial deployment will include Librestream Onsight Connect for remote mentoring and RealWear Foresight cloud platform for app deployment.

When asked, “What areas do you see having the biggest need in the future?” Spangler replied:

“Workforce, workforce, workforce. SCMEP works with manufacturing companies of all sizes and industries around the state. The No. 1 issue is identifying and recruiting a sustainable workforce. Companies are now thinking of out-of-the-box solutions for how they recruit and retain their workforce. We see more companies moving towards a virtual/augmented reality training method to recruit younger workers, which in turn has a higher learning retention rate compared to traditional training methods.”

How SCMEP are attempting to help meet the future needs of the industry is vetting future needs of South Carolina’s manufacturers and identifying resources that will bring bottom- and top-line improvements to the manufacturing community. We are benchmarking what the top original equipment manufacturers around the globe are doing and determining what best practices/technologies can help small- to medium-size manufacturing companies in South Carolina. The main goal is to find resources at the right price to assist companies in adopting the technology.

Other topics discussed include the Upstate manufacturing community, the market conditions impacting manufacturers in the area in 2019. How they addressing the widening skills gap, funding sources and details of their competitiveness review.

View Original source article.

Congress will be welcoming top vertical industry executives end-users from Manufacturing, Energy & Utilities, Connected Transport, Healthcare, and Buildings & Infrastructure.

1Minuut is bringing real-life experiences virtually to patients that can’t enjoy them in person by allowing patients to view real-time POV video streamed remotely by the Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses. Genzõ through their unique social communication platform which was designed to make POV video sharing mobile easy and safe to implement for customers. 1Minuut’s Genzõ’s mobile platform is unique and provides a new innovative and reliable method to connect patients, bring positive experiences and enable patients to watch through the eyes of others from anywhere.

Another aspect of 1Minuut Genzõ mobile platform is delivering telemedicine patient care services remotely and hands-free by connecting a doctor in the field to a nurse and patient in the doctor’s office or patient facility to augment patient care and save lives.  Through the M300 and Genzõ mobile platform ambulatory nurses are instantly connected to a doctor that can; observe the patient; provide immediate feedback or care instruction; and act faster and more appropriately.  This technology can also help bridge the labor shortage gap by allowing doctors to remotely service more patients because the solution instantly removes travel time, which would otherwise be required by a doctor to come visit the patient at their physical location.

1Minuut has worked closely with the Dutch healthcare industry over the last four years to develop Genzõ and over the past twelve months 1Minuut has successfully piloted and placed dozens of Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses into operations across the Dutch healthcare industry. The Genzõ, a mobile platform solution paired with the Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses has proven in actual field deployments to be extremely safe, reliable and enjoyable for customers as well as patients. After four years of development and one year of field testing this innovative Smart Glasses based solution is now being implemented across the healthcare industry as a new way to deliver care that improves the efficiency and quality of care and appreciation of life for patients.

The combination of the Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses and the Genzõ mobile platform enables real-time audio, first person Point of View (POV) video streaming and file sharing that is easy, mobile and safe.  Through collaboration with Deloitte Assuring Medical Apps Netherlands, the Genzõ mobile platform is also an extremely safe and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) ready application.

Read the full press release here.

The author quite rightly points out that there is also huge emphasis on enabling enterprise decision-makers to better understand how to leverage maximum ROI via AR initiatives.  This is in line with The AREA’s own ROI research which was directed by what enterprises were looking for.  Mozenix have their own infomration about ROI – the ROI of mobile AR: ARKIt verses ARCore.

“As more AR prototyping projects mature into full scale productions, the commercial benefits of the technology become increasingly clear.

For big businesses, kick-starting an AR initiative can bring about wide ranging commercial benefits including the creation of new revenue streams, the ability to grow existing streams of revenue and cost reduction. These commercial benefits, particularly in the context of industry 4.0, can be realised through the deployment of AR to bring about process efficiency gains and to enhance existing safety procedures and practices.”

The article states that now is a very good time to kick start projects in AR.

The piece goes on to mention a specific industrial example of Aberdeen based business Return to Scene Ltd who are deploying AR within the oil and gas sector.

Read the full article on the Mozenix blog https://mozenix.com/augmented-reality-industry-4-0-what-it-means-for-ctos/

A customised app allowed the project team to then view and check a section of the project’s MEPH work.

The team used an image tracker to superimpose the holographic BIM model onto the soffit of the ceiling.

This allowed the project team to walk through the building wearing the Microsoft HoloLens headset, which acts as a self-contained holographic computer, to check and audit the actual built product against the original design.

The headset can record what the wearer is seeing and is fully interactive, enabling any changes to be communicated to the design team.

Trevor Strahan, head of BIM at BakerHicks said: “The success of this trial marks an exciting step in our journey in exploring the possibilities HoloLens technology could bring to our industry.

“We have been quick to recognise the benefits that ‘virtual world’ technology can deliver and apply it in a ‘real world’ environment.

“We’ve been working on developing Augmented Reality for a while now and it is really exciting to see all that come to fruition.”

Steffan Speer, Morgan Sindall Construction & Infrastructure’s business improvement director said: “The benefits mixed reality could bring to our teams and customers are vast – including remote conferencing, construction design and installation reviews along with the presentation of construction models via holograms.

“I’m looking forward to our subsequent trials as we look to develop these exciting capabilities further.”