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 Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Honorable Mark Green, and the Secretary of State for the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, The Right Honourable Penny Mordaunt, M.P., announced 23 intended finalists for Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge, at the 2018 edition of the Concordia Annual Summit in New York City.

The finalists emerged from a pool of 615 applications received from 86 countries – 48 percent of which came from lower-middle-income countries. About one-third of the applications involved projects led by women.

The finalists, who stand collectively to receive $5 million in funding, will now put their innovative ideas into action to implement solutions that will provide, supply, or generate locally safe drinking water and sanitation, energy, life-saving information, or health supplies and services to help the most-vulnerable and hardest-to-reach people affected by conflict.

Steven Serneels of Iristick commented:

“While breakthrough tech innovations, such as Iristick smart glasses, are great for Industry, they can, at the same time, also mean so much for society, addressing pressing societal needs such as creating access to high quality, affordable health care by leveraging the expertise of doctors in remote areas in the area of e-health.”

USAID and DFID, which launched Creating Hope in Conflict as a multi-organizational partnership, today announced an additional combined investment of $10 million. In addition, the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands announced its commitment to join the partnership and invest $7.5 million in this effort, which brings the total contribution for the Humanitarian Grand Challenge to $32.5 million.

Grand Challenges Canada is implementing Creating Hope in Conflict on behalf of the investors.   The new commitment by the Dutch Government and the announcement of the 23 intended finalists are a testament to the power of partnerships to bring organizations together to respond more nimbly to complex emergencies and empower people to create better lives for themselves.

The 23 selected seed projects will receive grants of up to $250,000 each over a maximum of twenty-four (24) months to support the validation and testing of new approaches. Final grants, subject to negotiation, will be signed later this year.

You may also like to see Iristick’s AREA member profile and the Iristick website 

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/

Lars Bergstrom, Mozilla research engineering manager for VR/AR, wrote:

“We’re entering a new phase of work on JavaScript APIs here at Mozilla, that will help everyone create and share virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects on the open web.

The new WebXR Device API will provide the foundations to build augmented reality experiences in the browser by enabling the integration of the real-world with contextual overlays. For example, users could replace a Web page background with a skybox, that is a live image representing anything that is beyond immediate reach, such as the sky, a mountain, distant buildings, etc. Additionally, to allow users to navigate virtual spaces more naturally, WebXR will support different kinds of user inputs, including voice and gestures.

The WebXR community is working on draft specifications that target some of the constraints of today’s wireless devices. For instance, creating a skybox setting you can use to can change the background image of a web page. We’re also working on a way to expose the world-sensing capabilities of early AR platforms to the web, so developers can determine where surfaces are without needing to run complex computer vision code on a battery-powered device.

The current draft for WebXR covers light estimation, eye tracking, skyboxes, static 3D favicons, controller support, computer vision, and more. Web pages will be able to detect and query VR/AR capabilities, poll device orientation and position, and produce graphical frames at the required frame rate during an immersive AR session. Although the specification is not yet stable, Mozilla is planning to move forward based on its current state and then make all required adjustments as they become necessary.

At the beginning, support for immersive experiences will come through a specific version of Firefox, dubbed Firefox Reality, but later on it will extend to every platform where Mozilla supports WebVR, including Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS. For the iOS platform, Mozilla has already released an AR app, based on Apple’s ARKit, whose source code is available on GitHub. Mozilla iOS WebXR Viewer app is a sort of playground for Mozilla engineers to experiment with AR ideas for WebXR.

To dig deeper into WebXR, do not miss the current specification draft and the WebXR Device API Explainer, which also includes a wealth of code snippets to carry through basic tasks such as querying device capabilities, opening an XR session, outputting graphical content, etc.”

See Mozilla’s member profile: https://thearea.org/area-members/mozilla/

The system they’ve developed links an on-scene medical professional with the world’s leading experts through a headset worn by the physically present medic. In time, this method could replace the somewhat unwieldy telestrators that characterize real-time telemedicine today. In that sense, the project is a clear step toward world-class medical care distributed to those in high-stress situations everywhere, no matter how remote.

The Purdue system uses a transparent headset screen that gives the present medic the ability to see the patient in front of them overlaid with feedback from the off-site expert. The consulting expert, who might be anywhere in the world, uses an interactive video monitor that displays the patient and allows feedback to be given in real time. Even more impressive, the system uses vision algorithms to ensure that procedural notes are displayed in the relevant location in the operating doctor’s field of view. In other words, the headset helps organize the information from the mentor in a way that’s easy to understand for the mentee. This naturally increases effectiveness and reduces the likelihood of mistakes in a situation in which a patient’s life could hang in the balance.

Read more and watch videos on the full article on engineering.com

Apprentice.io shared with us their exciting news:

“We just closed an $8M Series A round for our platform built specifically for pharma, biotech and lab, line, suite environments.

We have raised over $10M in total capital to date now for our conversational AR and AI platform for enterprise industries.

We are the only all-day workflow solution for an entire organization — from the scientist in the lab discovering ground breaking drugs, to the operator in a manufacturing suite getting that drug to market for millions of patients around the world.

We’ve even leveraged the iPhone XS to support mobile solutions on ARKit 2 and ARCore for Android-enabled device in the lab and on the manufacturing floor. It’s an exciting time for AR!”

The Venture Reality Fund — leading early-stage investor focused on immersive and intelligent computing — and GFR Fund also joined as new investors.”

Please see the full press release and Apprentice’s member profile.

Key features and benefits of Apprentice include:

• Augmented batch records
• Tech transfer
• Seamless R&D workflows
• Instant troubleshooting and global support
• Hands are free to perform tasks guided by virtual data
• Stoppages for handwritten notations and data recordation are eliminated
• Time expenditures and financial losses caused by communication delays or remote site travel are greatly reduced
• Instant communication with remote vendors for machinery repair the moment immediate action is required
• Real-time global collaboration
• Efficient, cost-effective training
• Significant annual cost-cuts with direct SME support
• All data content is captured, recorded and exported for audit-readiness
• Avoid extensive down time from audit investigations and costly procedural deviations caused by human error

Semcon has experienced increased demand for digital content and live interaction from its customers and has invested heavily in AR/VR development to be able to visualize information. The partnership entitles Semcon to market and promote XMReality Remote Guidance and for XMReality to distribute and visualize content from Semcon in XMReality Remote Guidance. This way XMReality’s offering is broadened to encompass a solution where technical digital information and instructions, such as service instructions, can be visualized within the tool, thus empowering users to work smarter.

“We are very happy to start this collaboration with Semcon. Their capabilities to visualize information is a perfect match with our AR-enabled remote guidance tool. The agreement is therefore in line with our strategy to partner with companies that add value to our offering”, says Johan Castevall, CEO XMReality.

“Together with our expertise in product information, our collaboration creates new opportunities for our customers and their end users. AR makes it even easier to support for example service technicians by sharing and visualizing the right information at the right time”, says David Sondén, General Manager Product Information Sweden at Semcon.

“Our customers are in the forefront of digitalization. The joint offering together with Semcon enables improved digital service differentiation for our customers. Semcon are an important partner in our growing international eco system”, closes Johan Castevall.

The agreement does not imply any revenues or cost for the parties at the time of signing. Revenues will be generated from joint customer projects when new customers subscribe for the XMReality Remote Guidance software.

Enterprises with large mobile and deskless workforces are beginning to move away from the use of traditional devices like smartphones and tablets towards a new wave of mobility …. wearable and immersive technology, including body-worn sensors, AR glasses, VR headsets, exoskeletons, and more.

The potential is enormous: Hands-free, heads-up technology to reshape how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how you engage with coworkers, customers and partners.

Read the full press release about this important event in the calendar for all enterprises interested in how wearables can improve their business processes – and find out which businesses will be exhibiting at EWTS 2018, hosted by AREA member BrainXChange (member profile here).

Through this alliance, Fieldbit and InfinityAR will jointly develop a vertically integrated solution for field service organizations that marries InfinityAR’s SLAM and Augmented Reality software engine with Fieldbit’s award-winning enterprise platform for remote assistance, collaboration and on-job knowledge capture. In particular, the integration of InfinityAR’s software engines will enable Fieldbit to optimize the compatibility of its AR-based field services application with the next generation of optical see-through smart glasses.

Digital transformation is revolutionizing the field services industry. Large manufacturing and industrial organizations, as well as utilities and other enterprises, are in the midst of strategic digital transformation projects in order to improve the efficiency of their field personnel, retain practical knowledge from aging workforces, and connect customers to the problem resolution cycle. According to Gartner research, smart glasses and will play a key role in this digitalization process.

Read the entire press release here.