Of the coming year, Mark Sage, Executive Director said:

“As we head into 2019 and we look forward to continued growth in the ecosystem. More enterprises are researching, developing pilots and /or moving towards commercialising AR technology and gaining great ROI.  Thank you to all our members, partners and associates for being a part of this exciting journey and development during 2018.  I look forward to working with you to see what the new year will bring for AR in the enterprise.”

We would like to wish all our followers, readers, associates, colleagues, staff, leaders and members a very Happy New Year.

A demonstration of the integration of AccuWeather’s weather data in the Vuzix Blade®  Smart Glasses will debut in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January.

AccuWeather, the largest and fastest-growing weather media company and global leader in weather-related big data, business and analytics, provides localized weather forecasts to more than 1.5 billion people worldwide.  Now, for the first-time, individuals will be able to interact and view localized weather content and weather forecasts through Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses.   Planning for the weather is critically important at home or travelling to other cities or destinations.  Vuzix users now will have the added convenience of leaving their phones in their pockets while wearing the Vuzix Blade to stay informed and updated regarding the weather without missing a beat.

Read more in the full press release.

The State of Industrial Augmented Reality is an ongoing series of market research and analysis conducted by PTC. These reports explore the robust and increasingly complex opportunities presented by the Industrial Augmented Reality (AR) market. Tapping into PTC’s 30 years of technology expertise, 30,000 global customers, and 1,000 technology and service partners, the State of Industrial Augmented Reality series delivers actionable trends and insights across the entire IIoT ecosystem.

From the Executive Summary:

Over the life of our survey, use case adoption and customer business goals have shown that industrial enterprises are starting augmented reality projects internally, often piloting one or two use cases within their operations or service functions to prove value before expanding AR initiatives. Companies universally recognize the importance and benefits of adopting AR for their internal use. In today’s business climate of razor-thin operating margins and mounting economic pressures, the race for efficiency is starting to receive a nitrous boost from AR.

This mid-year spotlight edition of our State of Industrial Augmented Reality series examines development and adoption trends for companies primarily focused on developing augmented reality experiences for their end customers externally, by enhancing their customer-facing products, services, and solutions through the use of AR technology versus for their own internal use and benefit within their internal value chain.

PTC’s key findings include:

Industrial enterprises are keen to improve customer experiences, open up new revenue streams, and disrupt competition by leveraging the new augmented reality capabilities for product and service differentiation.

Use cases being developed for end customers have a strong focus on service or maintenance instructions, helping to reduce machine downtime and maximize product value.

Operator-focused companion experiences provide new opportunities for value-add offerings and improving customer service

Read the full report by PTC here.

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.

But if the jobs in your company require employees to work truly hands-free – yet have access to vital collaboration tools, digital assets and work instructions within their field of vision – then you need to seriously consider using smart glasses.

This advice based guide by Atheer gives 5 questions enterprise users need to ask on how to select the best smart glasses for your needs.

1. Do you need a monocular or binocular design
2. How important is the weight of the glasses
3. How do the smart glasses fit?
4. What kind of battery life do you need?
5. What’s the optimal display size and quality for your use case?

For the full article and explanation see Atheer’s blog.

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.

Finnish RealMax Oy is part of the RealMax Group, which is one of the leading companies within Augmented Reality. The company offers a complete AR ecosystem consisting of both hardware and software. RealMax primarily addresses AR in industrial, medical and education sectors where their AR smart glasses, RealWear HMT-1, meets the most challenging requirements.

Different use cases require different interaction methods, in addition to HMT-1’s revolutionary voice control and by enabling multimodal interaction, combining Crunchfish’s gesture control software a new level of user experience can be enabled.

The cooperation with RealMax strengthens Crunchfish’s position further as one of the leading suppliers of gesture control for AR smart glasses for industry use. Over the last year, Crunchfish has entered into several strategic partnerships with major global players, which has resulted in an extensive global network of partners, which is a key factor for success in a growing market.

“We are the leading suppliers of AR smart glasses and solutions for tough environments, including IP66 and even ATEX, where the demands are high on hardware, software and interaction efficiency. We see Crunchfish as one of the leading providers on the market and their gesture control software combined with RealWear HMT-1 voice control solution can enable the market’s most effective user experience in AR smart glasses,” says Matti Vappula, Director, Business Development at RealMax.

“A cooperation with RealMax targeting their AR smart glasses opens up for many new joint projects that can benefit from our gesture technology. We are very happy to get the opportunity to work with RealMax and provide a solution to interaction issues that many times appear in demanding industrial environments,” says Joakim Nydemark, CEO of Crunchfish.

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?

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