Congratulations go to AREA member Atheer for their work with Porsche. As stated on the Atheer website:

This week’s announcement by Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA) of “Tech Live Look,” an Augmented Reality (AR) technology designed to improve technical services at Porsche dealerships in the United States, is making an impact.

“Tech Live Look” uses Atheer’s AiR Enterprise – and it has gained the attention of the business press as well as automotive and augmented reality media.

Atheer has rounded up the best of how this has been reported on the internet and by the media. See the full round up on their blog here.

Key takeaways are below:

• Instead of a dealership employee being forced to contact the team about troubleshooting issues by way of phone and email, Tech Live Look allows both parties to view the car simultaneously together in real time
• Hoping to shorten diagnostic times, Porsche has developed a system to help factory engineers see what dealer technicians are seeing even from thousands of miles away.
• Next year, the sports car importer will deploy Atheer AiR Enterprise AR software to its US dealerships under the name Tech Live Look

AREA member Contextere announced it will collaborate with Samsung Electronics America Inc. to bring contextere’s intelligent personal agent for industrial workers to Samsung Gear S3 wearables.

The contextere software, which provides industrial workers with the right information, at the right time, on the right device, will also leverage the Samsung GearUP Wearable API Marketplace on the company’s wearable devices to deliver AI-powered capabilities such as real-time health intelligence, geo-location for improved safety, and notification task alerts and hands-free calling.

The partnership between contextere and Samsung combines each company’s strengths — Samsung’s GearUP platform, which collects biometrics, geo-location, and other contextual information, coupled with contextere’s machine learning algorithms. This results in unparalleled actionable intelligence for industrial companies, including the ability to provide workers with critical procedural guidance and notifications related to their job. For example, a manufacturing worker can be alerted to breakdowns in hydraulic systems, while an aviation worker can receive pre-defined geo-location alerts informing them of their next work site location. This occurs via a wearable, while monitoring real-time stress, making for a safer, more productive work environment.

“contextere is focused on human-centric innovation, and our collaboration with Samsung exemplifies this,” explains Gabe Batstone, contextere CEO. “We are excited to bring our transformational industrial software to Samsung users, as well as our customers in Aerospace, Energy and Smart City markets. This includes Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, as part of their C-130J Super Hercules program, who earlier this year invested in the development of an intelligent personal agent for aircraft technicians.”

Lockheed Martin and Samsung Electronics America are quoted in the press release which can be read in full here.

Availability of the contextere application on the Samsung Gear S3 is expected in Q1 2018.

BrainXChange is an AREA member who you may know as the organisers of the EWTS events (see here for the next one). They also have a great Enterprise Wear blog which is worth keeping an eye on if you’re interested in new technology wearables for the enterprise.

In one of their November blogs the following topics are discussed:

• See the video, where Picavi’s Johanna Bellenberg talks about head-worn devices with the very people implementing the technology at Walmart, GE Transportation, Gensler, USPS, and FM Global
• AR/VR is helping the Postal Service meet the demands of a changing digital world
• Postal Service also using AR/VR for vehicle maintenance and to eliminate 50% of training time for new employees.
• Walmart is using VR at its training academies to simulate exceptional customer experience problems
• FM Global, a commercial property risk insurer that counts one out of every three Fortune 1000 companies as a customer, is using AR for remote engineering surveys of client facilities and VR as a selling tool.
• GE Transportation is using AR/VR to design and build kits of locomotive parts for operators, thinking through the presentation of these kits and how they align to manufacturing or service processes.
• From a plant layout perspective, VR is also incredibly useful for designing and planning operations.
• At Gensler, visualization technologies are impacting how architects design and develop structures of every kind. The architecture and design firm is also considering how these tools will impact the places it designs as those buildings and environments mature.

You can read BrainXChange’s member profile here.

The Government’s Industrial Strategy White Paper, published today, has confirmed £33m* immersive technology focusing on a challenge on Audience of the Future, focusing on virtual, augmented and mixed reality and how it is changing the way in which we experience the world around us – from entertainment and art to shops and classrooms.

The challenge is set to bring creative businesses, researchers and technologists together through a combination of complimentary R&D activities which will explore the future of creative content across the UK Creative Industries, including TV and film, games, music, sports entertainment, arts & culture and fashion.

This investment is designed to capture new global audiences and grow our leading market position in creative content, products and services by adopting, exploiting and developing immersive technologies.

Immerse UK will be supporting the development of a final business case through continued industry consultations and more information on the programme structure will be announced within the next few weeks.

For more information please visit Immerse.org.uk.

One of the AREA’s objectives is making sure the augmented reality ecosystem has enough skilled workers.  Readers can keep an eye out for professional roles in AR at our member organisations.

In the meantime, please do take a look at the MTC in the UK.  Their careers page can be found here. Since its launch in 2011, the MTC has grown rapidly: we now employ over 500 people at our Ansty Park campus just outside Coventry. To support this continued growth, we are represented by Consilium Recruit, our dedicated recruitment partner.

An exciting, vibrant place to work, the MTC and its subsidiary businesses offer unlimited opportunities to Research Engineers, Project Managers, IT Specialists, Apprentices, Graduates and many more. Our campus, facilities and research capabilities are unrivalled and we offer a competitive salary and benefits package.

Positions that may be of particular interest to readers of the AREA news site would be the following:

• AR/MR front-end/solutions developer with expertise using Unity 3D and SDKs related to the platform

• AR/MR back-end developer. Preferably with strong IT skills including networking, cloud, and C# is a must

• UX/UI/Artist covering the persona definition, user experience and interface design, Maya, 3Ds Max

Please follow the instructions on the MTC careers page for further information on how to apply. You can find out more about the MTC on their member page here.

The Strategic Alliance also offers an expanded platform of products and services to existing 3DS customers in Finland pursuing Dynamic Product Visualisation.

Chrysalisforge, a company established in January 2017, provides various services and products including, but not limited to, strategic consulting related to automated visualization of industrial products and processes offering value added features to industrial companies.

Pontus Blomberg, VP Business Development of 3DS, said: “We complement each other well. It is of mutual advantage to share knowledge and to cooperate in offering clients value propositions.”

Michael Rygol, MD of Chrysalisforge, explained: “3DS, with their background of 3D graphics, and more recently, developments in customer-focused AR and VR, are well-placed to capitalise on the rapidly growing worldwide interest in this space. The UK, in particular, has a strong record of developing and adopting new technology innovations in a business context. I see the combination of 3D Studio’s customer-centric developments in tandem with a further focus on enterprise usage as presenting great opportunities in the significant British engineering sector.”

Readers can find out more about the work of 3D Studio Blomberg on their website.

AREA member RealWear was named the Frost & Sullivan Industrial Wearables New Product Innovation Award 2017.  Details can be read in full in the 12-page document with the key facts being summarised below:

Industry challenges are explained. Wearables adoption in industrial sectors began with handheld devices such as rugged mobiles and tablets customized for industrial surroundings.

RealWear, is an industrial wearables start-up based in Silicon Valley, US that has bridged the gap between high-performance hardware and user-friendly software to create a new rugged hands-free head-mounted tablet for industrial applications in sectors including oil and gas, automotive, and mining.

Details of RealWear’s HMT-1 new product attributes and customer impact are explained.  As RealWear HMT-1 is predominantly used for applications such as maintenance and data collection in hostile environments in the oil and gas, energy, and utilities sectors, its reliability has a direct impact on the downtime, production, and cost incurred for the customer.

Features of the product are highlighted, including line of sight. While most of the industrial wearables in the market hinder the operator’s line-of-sight in some way, HMT-1 is inherently designed to minimize disruption to the operator’s line-of sight, and the arm can even be completely moved out of sight, or can be shifted to left or right, depending on the user’s preference. Adding to this flexibility, HMT-1 can clip onto many models of personal protective equipment (PPE) hard hat and be used with any type of eyeglasses.

The report goes on to explain the significance of new product innovation.

A recent article on BrainXchange lists a number of enterprises that are utilising wearable technology in order to create beneficial customer service schemes.

The list includes the following companies:

• Audi = using Virtual Reality headsets to allow potential buyers to visualise the cars in a range of simulated landscapes. They partnered with Zerolight to produce virtual scenery that wouldn’t be possible to see in real life, e.g. viewing cars on the moon. Ford is also developing a VR platform in addition to AR of hologram display cars.
• Lifestyle Home Builders = a Virginia-based company that is using VR in custom home building and buying. They provided customers with the experience of virtually viewing versions of completed houses via a VR headset by adapting building information modelling and off-the-shelf software.
• Cincinnati Airport (CVG) = recently trialled Samsung Gear S3 Smart Watches to aid janitors in keeping ahead with clean-ups and supplies. They partnered with Hipaax to integrate data from sensors in restrooms with their TaskWatch application; if successful, this will be released in 2018.
• Norden Machinery = a Swedish company that provides tube filling for cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. They partnered with XMReality to enable employees to provide remote support for their customers via use of Smart Glasses.
• Air New Zealand = the airline partnered with Dimension Data to produce an AR solution using the Hololens to help stewards to anticipate passengers’ needs. Emirates is also considering how their staff can use AR glasses to enhance the passengers’ experience.
• PulteGroup = one of the US’s largest homebuilders. They are utilising VR headsets to enable customers to take virtual tours of potential future homes where the model houses are as yet unfinished.

AREA member Atheer, announced recently that they have developed an Android tablet version of their own AiR Enterprise Augmented Reality application.

This new tablet version of Atheer’s AiR Enterprise, currently is in use by members of their Early Adopter Program. This new technology was initially designed for use with the popular Samsung S2 tablets. AiR Enterprise will support a broad range of tablets and handheld Android devices.

Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Atheer, Soulaiman Itani said: “The release of AiR Enterprise for Android tablets is another important step towards delivering on the promise of Augmented Reality for all our industrial enterprise customers. It provides our customers with the flexibility, scalability, speed and choice they need to bring together their physical and digital workspaces – using assets and technology they already have.”

Getting AiR Enterprise for Android tablets into the hands of customers allows Atheer to be able to offer and refine AR solutions that seamlessly integrate tablets and smart glass experiences into a single, cohesive working environment.

AREA member Boeing has announced that its venture capital arm, HorizonX, will be investing in C360 Technologies, a startup that focuses on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 360-Degree videos.

Boeing Vice President for Horizon, Steve Nordlund, said the investment is a ‘win-win’ due to C360s video capabilities it will bring to a new market while providing an outlet for Boeing to further some of its own technological initiatives. “Our C360 investment is a powerful example of how HorizonX can access rapid advances in innovation outside aerospace and bring them to our Boeing customers.” Says Nordlund.

Mike Sinnett, Vice President of Product Development at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said current trends in the aviation industry could push Boeing to look into autonomous options, provided that they are equally as reliable as human pilots. “There’s going to be a transition away from the requirement to have a skilled aviator operating the airplane tactically, to having a system that operates the vehicle autonomously.” States Sinnett

According to the article on Geek Wire, C360 joins three other companies in HorizonX’s investment portfolio: Virginia-based Upskill, another AREA member, (provider of Augmented-Reality solutions for industrial settings); Kirkland, Wash.,-based Zunum Aero, which is working on a new class of hybrid electric airplanes; and Texas-based SparkCognition, which focuses on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.