A press release from Upskill dated May 9, 2017 reveals that AREA Member, Upskill (formerly APX Labs), a leader in enterprise software for Augmented Reality (AR) devices, announced the acquisition of Austin, TX-based Pristine, the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of AR collaboration and video streaming software. The press release can be read here

And is summarised below:
Pristine’s remote assistance and knowledge capture solutions will complement Upskill’s existing Skylight industrial AR platform to offer the most comprehensive product offering in the industry, making it easier for customers to meet their operational needs and IT requirements.

“Augmented reality is driving incredible productivity results across functional areas in industrial enterprises. Our customers are seeing an average of 32 percent performance improvement from their very first use of Skylight,” said Brian Ballard, co-founder and CEO, Upskill. “There aren’t very many new technologies that can deliver this kind of ‘out of the box’ value creation, which is why adoption of AR technology is accelerating at an incredible pace. This underscores the importance for Upskill to leverage new opportunities that will help us scale and innovate faster than anyone else in the space. The acquisition of Pristine will allow us to do just that.”

Pristine is best known for its flagship product, EyeSight, which provides best-in-class “see what I see” video streaming capabilities for remote experts. Customer deployments have proven EyeSight to help workers complete inspection, compliance and repair processes at a fraction of the cost and time normally required. Through the acquisition, Upskill will now offer Pristine’s portfolio of field-worker collaboration solutions including EyeSight. These applications are typically deployed on smart glasses, but are also available across Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. With Pristine solutions in its repertoire, Upskill will be able to add breadth and domain expertise to its product offering and more choices for customers seeking to implement AR across manufacturing, logistics and field service applications.

Along with the added technology capabilities and product solutions, Pristine also brings to Upskill a talented engineering and product team with deep industry experience in scaling deployment of enterprise wearables across an impressive client base,

Look out for our upcoming blog where The AREA speaks to Jay Kim of Upskill.

Announced this week, AREA member RealWear, makers of the HMT-1 which is the first voice-driven, hands free, head-mounted tablet, will moderate the Wearables, Big Data and the Internet of Things panel this year at the Spring 2017 EWTS event.

The Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit is the leading event, focused on the use of Wearable technology for industrial enterprise applications. The panel will include companies such as CDM Smith, Boeing, GE and many more with the event taking place in San Diego, CA, May 10-12.

Andy Lowery, CEO of RealWear who will be the moderator has said “Innovations in wearable technology are currently transforming how work gets done across all industries. I look forward to leading the discussion on the emergence of wearable technology for the enterprise, the benefits it is delivering and the challenges that remain as wearables continue to become valuable assets for the 21^st-century workforce.”

Panellists will include Scott Aldridge from CDM, Peter Chai from Brigham and Women’s hospital, Thomas Dawidczyk from Lux Research, Brain Laughlin from Boeing and Sam Murley from GE.

An article released this week by VR Room discusses the companies with heavy investment in Augmented and Virtual Reality. Facebook gets a mention, as does Venture capital firm Rothenberg Ventures who it is claimed has made 32 investments in the industry.

Worldwide revenues for the Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality market are projected to approach $14 billion in 2017, according to research by the IDC. But that’s forecast to explode to $143 billion by 2020.  Increased investment is leading to hiring sprees for AR/VR jobs.

The article provides graphs to show which companies have invested the most in AR/VR investments and acquisitions.  Additionally, there is a graph showing the most AR/VR job listings on LinkedIn such as Microsoft and INTEL.

This article with the graphs can be seen and read in full here.

AREA Member BrainXChange has summarised for their readers information from a webinar “What’s Next: Preparing Your Organization for Enterprise Wearables.”  Speakers on the webinar were:

Chris Croteau, General Manager of Head-worn Devices at Intel

Jay Kim, Chief Strategy Officer of Upskill (formerly APX Labs)

BrainXChange have prepared 3 takeaways from the webinar:

1. Know where you’re coming from to get to where you’re going

2. Start with structured information within your current systems of record

3. Take a layered approach to security

The full summary by BrainXChange can be read in full here.

Readers may be interested in the recently released Global AR Market Forecast to 2027 by types, by application, by end users, Industry Trends and Analysis Forecast. 

This market report splits up the market into many segments. A key finding is that one of the major growths for this market is caused by the adoption of 3D visualization in the healthcare sector. Key players mentioned in this report include some of AREA’s members and other well known technology names, with the Key Players Including:

• DAQRI
• PTC
• Blippar
• Magic Leap
• Total Immersion
• Qualcomm Inc
• Google
• Microsoft
• Apple
• Sony

The market is segmented into type such as sensors, display, processors, semiconductor, hardware and software and also segmented by application such as consumer electronics, commercial, healthcare, automobile, and logistics among others.

This report also provides:

• A detailed analysis of the market structure along with a forecast for the next 10 years
• Insights about factors affecting the market growth
• Provides a historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub segments
• Enables to analyse the AR Market based on factors such as – Price analysis, supply chain analysis etc.
• Offers strategic profiling of key players in the market

A sample of this report can be requested below.

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1143

In an article this week by biz tech magazine, AR technology is increasingly being targeted at the energy and utilities market, as well as manufacturing and other industrial use cases. The article believes that new AR hardware is being introduced specifically for the industrial market.

Market research firm ABI Research said previously this year that they expect AR in enterprise applications to “hit an inflection point in 2018, with smart glass shipments growing to 28 million in 2021,” with a 227% CAGR.ABI expects total AR market revenues —across devices, platforms and licensing — to reach $96 billion in 2021.

“2016 was a year of discovery for AR, with the industry focusing on initial [return on investment] metrics,” Eric Abbruzzese, a senior analyst at ABI, said in a statement.

We (AREA) and UI Labs also announced the release of AR hardware and software functional requirements guidelines last week which will help AR technology companies develop products for industrial users.

These AR functional requirements documents will lead to technology that improves the performance and efficiency for manufacturers in a number of areas, including employee training and safety; factory floor and field services operations; machine assembly, inspection and repair; manufacturing space and product design; and much more.These guidelines address hardware features such as battery life, connectivity, field of view, onboard storage, onboard operating systems, environmental aspects, inputs/outputs and safety. They also cover software functions such as authoring, AR content, creating 3D content, deployment of AR content and Internet of Things.

Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Procter & Gamble initiated the guidelines development process as part of a project through the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, a UI Labs collaboration. However, many other tech companies and AREA members contributed to the requirements at a workshop in March, including Microsoft, General Electric, Rolls-Royce, Dow Chemical, Intel, the U.S. Air Force, Stanley Black & Decker, Johnson & Johnson, Newport News Shipbuilding, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Daqri, Upskill, Optech4D, Scope AR, iQagent, Six15, RealWear and others.

“For the first time, industry — both suppliers and users in the AR space — will have access to a benchmark set of requirements that will help them develop a roadmap and source, select, evaluate and deploy augmented reality solutions,” Mark Sage, executive director of AREA, said in a statement. “These functional requirements will be used to help continue the development of the AR ecosystem, and AREA is looking forward to communicating and driving future changes.”

Barrett J. Brunsman, Staff reporter for the Cincinnati Business Courier, highlights how Procter & Gamble Co. “played a lead role in the development of the world’s first guidelines on functional requirements for augmented reality hardware and software” when working with 64 other organizations to develop functional guidelines for augmented reality in the manufacturing sector.

Read the full article…

IndustryWeek highlights the efforts of 65 organizations to help shape the future of augmented reality in the manufacturing sector. The functional guidelines released Tuesday will help companies within the AR ecosystem to develop products and solutions for industrial enterprise users.  

Read the full article…

Matt Hamblen, Senior Editor for Computerworld, writes about the hardware and software guidelines for using augmented reality (AR) on the manufacturing floor. These guidelines were published Tuesday in a joint effort between UI Labs and the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).  

Read the full article…

 ^{[Photo credit: Turkletom / Flickr]}

AREA Member Boeing recently announced their plans to launch a new venture capital arm called the HorizonX. This new project will invest in two start-ups;

1. AREA member, Upskill a Washington DC based start-up that builds enterprise software for industrial augmented reality (AR) devices (see their member profile here) 
2. Zunum Aero, a Seattle-area company that builds electric hybrid aircrafts

Upskill’s Skylight Platform uses Augmented Reality Glasses to help assembly workers with complex tasks. This technology provides specific information to workers on their AR glasses which removes the need of using paper. Upskill has also received additional funding from GE Ventures in a Series B Round.  Upskill’s Skylight platform can be used across manufacturing plants, maintenance and repair facilities and in distribution.