The company reports that the new UX/UI design for smart glass Tandem sessions is more intuitive, with redesigned screens, text, and icons for improved navigation. Customized user menus have been incorporated, and voice commands have been leveraged to better guide users through processes. In addition, users receive application feedback during critical interactions.

Interactions are enhanced with new capabilities in the company’s ARKit solution. For example, single- or multi-user drawing annotations can now be made on a captured image. For direct, live support, remote experts can use a laser pointer to assist users as they complete a task. Remote experts can also bring attention to a specific area or a part of machinery by dropping 3D augmented reality arrows in an operator’s real-world environment. Tandem sessions can be conducted between operators and subject matter experts across any device. Depending on an individual’s comfort level or work-flow, users can stream sessions from iOS, phones, or tablets.

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Vuforia solutions give industrial customers an efficient and effective way to create AR/MR interactions that capitalize on Microsoft HoloLens 2 new gestures, voice enhancements, and tracking capabilities without the need for extensive programming or costly custom designers.

Today, industrial manufacturers face a growing shortage of skilled workers, high turnover, increasingly complex products, and fierce competitive pressures. Augmented and mixed reality help overcome these challenges and promote workforce efficiency by delivering information when and where workers need it most: in the real-world context of their daily work environment.

With the immersive “hands-free” experiences created with Vuforia Studio for HoloLens 2, industrial customers can empower their workers and improve their manufacturing, service, and training processes to unlock new business opportunities and better meet the needs of their customers.

“One of the key value drivers for AR/MR in the industrial space is improving worker efficiency with ‘hands-free’ procedural guidance and instruction,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO, PTC. “Vuforia Studio’s efficient AR/MR authoring environment and HoloLens 2 usability and comfort enhancements are a winning combination for industrial manufacturers.”

Howden Creates Immersive Customer Experience with Vuforia and HoloLens 2

This week at Mobile World Congress, PTC and Microsoft will demonstrate how AR/MR improves worker efficiency with Howden, a Colfax company, that is using Vuforia Studio and HoloLens 2 to improve the service experience. Howden is a global engineering company with industrial products that help multiple sectors improve their everyday processes, from mine ventilation and waste water treatment to heating and cooling.

Reusing existing 3D models, Howden created scalable step-by-step mixed reality service instructions with Vuforia Studio. Incorporating real-time and historic IoT data from PTC’s ThingWorx^® Industrial IoT platform and Microsoft Azure, Howden is enhancing their customer’s experience of owning the equipment.

“Our equipment typically operates as process critical, and our customers are looking to us for solutions to empower them on how to best service their equipment,” said Maria Wilson, Ph.D., global leader data driven advantage, Howden Group. “Using mixed reality rendered on Microsoft HoloLens, the customer experience is truly immersive. It provides insights into the operating conditions and performance of the equipment that they’ve never had before.”

Driving the Adoption of AR/MR in the Industrial Enterprise

This announcement heralds the next step in the PTC and Microsoft alliance that kicked-off in 2017 to help drive adoption of augmented and mixed reality in the industrial enterprise. Vuforia Studio and HoloLens 2 will enable content creators to leverage their existing 3D and IoT data from ThingWorx^® and Azure to improve collaboration, understanding, and productivity in real world environments.

“The integration of Vuforia and Microsoft HoloLens 2 continues our collaboration with PTC and advances our efforts to provide transformative experiences for our customers within the manufacturing arena,” said Alex Kipman, technical fellow, AI and Mixed Reality, Microsoft. “We look forward to our collaboration providing innovative out-of-the-box solutions that accelerate the adoption of mixed reality in the industrial space.”

With Vuforia Engine, developers can also take advantage of HoloLens 2 advanced features to deliver unique, engaging, and interactive mobile experiences that bring people closer to brands and products.

As part of PTC’s ongoing initiatives to drive innovation and provide customers with the best solutions for addressing manufacturing, service, and training challenges, PTC’s Vuforia solutions will also leverage the recently announced Microsoft Azure Spatial Anchor Service in the future to enable more collaborative, cross-platform mixed reality experiences.

With Skylight’s comprehensive support for devices, hands-on workers can now seamlessly access helpful information for their tasks, collaborate with others through live video and capture insights as they work on any device. Hands-on workers can also seamlessly transition between devices, starting the day on a smartphone to review work orders and continuing on smart glasses when tasks require keeping their hands free.

Businesses running Skylight now have maximum flexibility to deploy a range of devices optimized for each hands-on task with one centralized platform connected to their enterprise systems. With this, they are better able to secure the access of information flowing to and from every worker and further scale across their entire operations.

“Upskill’s mission is to empower every hands-on worker to be successful. That’s why we believe it’s critical to bring the digital enterprise all the way to the hands-on workforce, with the right information available to them at the right time with minimal disruptions,” said Brian Ballard, Upskill CEO and co-founder. “With the latest enhancements to Skylight, it makes critical data, peer collaboration and the unique fidelity provided by augmented reality even more accessible. Skylight accelerates organizations along their digital transformation journey, regardless of where they are today.”

Read their full press release here.

About RealWear

Every day, everywhere around the world, industrial workers face daunting challenges. They must stay alert to the performance of countless systems while navigating complex and often dangerous environments. Thousands of projects are quite literally in their hands.  If you’re responsible for improving worker safety and efficiency and safety, where do you start?  By freeing your hands.  RealWear is creating a future that prioritizes industrial worker safety, efficiency, and performance.

Empower Industrial Workers

The performance of an entire factory might hinge upon a single gauge or pump. If industrial workers can respond to changing conditions in a factory, they can reduce costly downtime. But what if they could be proactive? With the RealWear HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1, industrial workers can anticipate problems before they start. That’s how you stay on track.

Focus On Knowledge Transfer

While many companies are tracking machinery performance through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), not all of this information is valuable at every moment. Managing this firehose of data is one of the most important IoT use cases in manufacturing and industry. How do you get the right information to industrial workers at the right time?

RealWear headsets give industrial workers an easy way to drill down on the data that matters. The HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1 industrial wearables allow workers to interact with machinery in ways that have never been possible before. With RealWear headsets, industrial workers can use voice commands to accomplish the following:

• Say what you see: call up schematics, data sheets, and more
• Record live video and take pictures on command
• Run into trouble? Call a remote mentor

This kind of knowledge transfer is exactly what industrial workers need: relevant, on-demand, and hands-free.

Make It Intuitive

Industrial workers have enough to think about without having to learn a new piece of hardware. And that’s why RealWear headsets make knowledge transfer so easy. You can get started by remembering just one phrase: “Say what you see.”

Andrew Rhodes of RealWear expressed his gratitude on behalf of RealWear to John Hitch at New Equipment Digest for an excellent overview of RealWear technology. Read the full article here: Crowning Achievement: This Industrial Wearable Reigns Supreme.

The MTC has been officially named as a Microsoft Mixed Reality Partner.

They will now work together to create apps and teach more companies how to use technology such as HoloLens, Microsoft’s mixed reality headset, to save time and money, and improve quality and customer service.

“The MTC supports large and small companies across the UK,” said David Varela, Technology Manager at the MTC. “Our mission is to help manufacturers in the UK compete on the global stage. One way we do that is by using HoloLens, and two Microsoft tools in particular – Remote Assist and Layout. By sending our members a HoloLens, we are able to remotely work with companies to solve their problems and help them achieve their goals. It is much easier and cheaper for everyone.”

Rather than put users in a fully computer-generated world, as virtual reality does, HoloLens allows users to place 3D digital models in the room alongside them. As the Windows-10-based product does not have wires or external cameras, or require a phone or PC connection, users can walk around the objects they create and interact with them using gestures, gaze and voice.

Remote Assist lets people collaborate remotely with heads-up, hands-free video calling, image sharing and mixed-reality annotations. With Layout, you can import 3D models to easily create and edit room layouts in real-world scale. The MTC has previously worked with customers on hundreds of scenarios, showing them the value of the technology.

The MTC built on those programs to offer their own services, including Remote Line Walk. “What would usually happen is an engineer would visit an SME, walk around the workshop and suggest technologies and processes to make them more efficient or help them overcome a challenge,” Varela said. “Now, instead of us sending a person to the site, we just ship a HoloLens to them, they put on the headset and we can deliver the same process remotely. Someone who used to need three days to do a couple of visits is now able to do three visits in one day. We can give them an expert on demand.”

HoloLens is already being used by large manufacturers and industrial customers such as Chevron and can have huge benefits for other firms in the sector, which is a major part of the UK economy.

Manufacturing makes up 10% of the economy, employs 2.6 million people and is responsible for 45% of exports, totalling £275 billion. The importance of technology to helping growth in the sector was reflected in research from the EEF, the trade body for the UK’s manufacturing sector, which found that 80% of firms believe Industry 4.0 – the blending of industrial practices and technology – will be a reality by 2025.

“We tried every device in the market and the HoloLens was the best by a good distance, and it still is,” Varela said. “The beauty of HoloLens is it’s Windows-based, so developing is far easier than for other devices. There are also integrations with Azure services, and that makes it so powerful.”

This is just the beginning of the MTC’s work with HoloLens and mixed reality. Over the past two years, it has been working with the Advanced Visualization steering committee, including large aerospace manufacturing companies to create an Azure cloud-based platform called VIVAR. VIVAR is a guided instructions platform that can be used across the manufacturing process in order to advance workplace visualisations.