Jay Kothari, Project Lead at Glass at X, is schedules to offer the opening keynote this year. Kothari will use the event as an opportunity to explore the implications of wearable tech, specifically Glass, on the future of work.

Kothari’s session will explore the enterprise wearables space and address the reasons why enterprises can no longer afford to ignore this new category of technology. Some key questions that Kothari will explore include the following: Are wearables a legitimate enterprise priority right now? Has the technology caught up to enterprises’ needs? Which devices and applications are seeing the most traction today? How will the role of wearables in the workplace evolve? And how can enterprises prepare for the future? What’s clear is that Kothari’s questions are questions that everyone should now be asking, whether they’re educators or professionals leading an enterprise looking ahead to the future of workplace training.

The article runs through a fairly basic description of wearable tech.  We are well on our way to realizing the shift from mobile phones to wearable tech, and the upcoming Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit in Boston this month is yet another sign of how rapidly the wearable tech market is expanding.

Safety, compliance and training are all on the agenda at the upcoming Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit. In a session focused on wearables “below the neck,” for example, presenters will explore how devices ranging from smartwatches and smart clothing to exoskeletons and body-worn sensors can be used to track workplace activity to increase efficiency, productivity, and safety; collect real-time data and communication; generate employee biometrics; help employees with navigation; and increase on-site security.

In another session, Albert Zulps, a Regional Director at construction firm, Skanska, will explore wearable tech in relation to construction industry safety. As noted in the program overview, the presentation will “on how wearables, IoT, sensing devices, virtual reality and RTLS can enhance environmental awareness and real-time visibility of worker’s safety and productivity on active job sites, as well as into operations.”

The implications of wearable technology for workplace training are profound. Indeed, it now seems likely that over the coming decade, wearable tech will become the primary interface through which workplace training is delivered. This will help to create new types of apprentice-based opportunities but also enable trainers to collect detailed feedback on what trainees do and do not understand. There is hope this will lead to more learner-specific training opportunities and over all, more effective and cost-effective training programs.

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.

The mechanic is on the ground with a plane in Boston that’s in need of engineer servicing, and she is using AR technology (particularly “see what I see” video conferencing features) on the repair with an engineer in San Jose who worked on the original design of the engine.

The engineer can use smart glasses to electronically “circle” a part that needs attention (shown on the screen of the smart glasses so that both the mechanic and the remotely-connected engineer).

The engineer in San Jose can provide more detailed guidance to the mechanic in Boston, getting her to look more closely at various aspects of the aircraft part that she is working on – and provide real-time feedback to the mechanic on the next steps that she needs to take.

How many challenges are solved at once:

• Allowing the engineer in San Jose to deliver detailed, contextual guidance that allows him to see and interact with the malfunctioning aircraft part, so that he is able to scale the delivery of his highly-valued skills to the mechanic in Boston (without having to travel in-person to do so).
• Using an engineer in San Jose to troubleshoot an MRO issue in Boston, which helps provide national and international scale for the engineer’s employer.
• Offering the mechanic in Boston immediate access to the latest task checklists (for working on the troublesome part) – and any existing training videos – directly via her smart glasses before initiating the video conference call to the engineer in . This ensures that valuable aviation engineer time is only sought when other support avenues have been exhausted.
• Getting the right information to the right place – quickly and easily. Using smart glasses (and either voice, gestures or head movements to access the information and remote experts she needs), the mechanic is safely able to get at all the information she needs without having to remove work gloves, move away from the part she is working with or otherwise be distracted from the task at hand.

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.

The PTC products being adopted include the ThingWorx IoT platform, Windchill product lifecycle management and ThingWorx Studio augmented reality solutions. RMIT is also expanding its relationship with PTC value-added partner LEAP Australia.

RMIT has identified a recent surge in demand for graduates with skills in Industry 4.0, including the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and augmented reality (AR) for the enterprise.

Pier Marzocca, Professor and Associate Dean in the University’s School of Engineering, said RMIT believed insights from industrial IoT data, combined with AR for in-context display, would be critical to the business transformations that will arise from Industry 4.0.

RMIT also plans to use its ThingWorx technologies to expand its collaboration with local industry partners, especially companies without sufficient resources to comprehensively harness the transformative nature of Industry 4.0 for their business, according to PTC.

The article can be read in full here.

If you think these types of devices are not being used in the workplace, think again. In 2016, according to Alvarez, companies gave employees approximately 202,000,000 wearable devices. That number is expected to grow to half-a-million by 2021.

Benefits and uses of wearables at work for operational efficiencies are outlined, as are the drawbacks of using them, including security. The advice is to set some policies which govern the workplace wearable devices that are inevitably coming to more and more workplaces.

Things to consider include:

• Who owns the device and the data?
• How is the data stored and used?
• Who can access the data?
• What are the employees’ expectations of what the device can do?
• How will you prevent abuse by employees?
• How will you prevent abuse by the company?

Questions to help companies develop a code of conduct around devices are offered:

• How is the data collected?
• Where is the data stored?
• How will the data be used?
• Who owns the data?
• Can the data can be sold

The article can be read in full here:

For more information and advice, please feel free to browse the information on The AREA’s website for research and information on AR enterprise security or reach out to speak with us about membership.

A feature on the Gartner Hype Cycle, by Kasey Panetta, suggests enterprises need to explain the business potential of blockchain, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

The technology would offer higher levels of performance from employees and offer businesses an edge. Whilst the technology is upwards of 10 years from mainstream adoption, it has the potential to create a multi-billion dollar human augmentation market.  While human augmentation is just at the beginning of the innovation trigger phase of the Hype Cycle, complementary emerging technologies such as machine learning, blockchain, drones (commercial UAVs), software-defined security and brain-computer interfaces have moved significantly along the Hype Cycle since 2016.

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017 focuses on three emerging technology mega-trends:

1. Artifical Intelligence
2. Transparently immersive experiences
3. Digital platforms

These three emerging technologies are discussed in detail in the article and can be seen represented in the figure below:

Apple and Accenture have joined forces to help businesses build better applications for iOS, the operating system that powers Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, according to an article on 1reddrop.com.

Apple is pushing hard towards making its software even better for the enterprise sector, and already has an ongoing partnership with IBM. Now, Apple is teaming up with Accenture to bring a new service offering for the business segment.

The plan is to launch a new platform for businesses and to help enterprises unlock new revenue streams, improve customer service and increase overall productivity, all at a reasonable cost. The duo’s plan is to increase the number of tools and services that will help businesses operate more efficiently with iPhones and iPads.

These include IoT-specific tools, templates and pre-designed code that will allow companies to create custom software for their specific needs. There will also be a migration service which will speed up the process of transferring apps and data to iOS, and will help quickly integrate iOS into back-end systems.

The engineering team will largely focus on frontline apps – the apps that will run on iOS, especially in the retail and banking sectors.

It will also focus on augmented reality through its ARKit that was earlier unveiled at their developers conference.

Executive Director of the AREA, Mark Sage, was recently interviewed for Manufactura Magazine in Mexico. The article from this interview describes the advantage of Augmented Reality technology in the aerospace and automotive industries.

The advancement of smartphones and their popularity in the last ten years has allowed them to be used as data processing units and AR displays. Sage is quoted to have said that the development of technology such as Microsoft Hololens and Google Glass has fuelled consumer tech companies making AR available to the public. Even consulting a map on a cell phone is utilising AR, despite the misconception that AR is only available via smart glasses or helmets.

Although some organisations are already starting to implement AR or developing solutions that will help AR adoption, it is only just the beginning. Sage also said that industry will adopt AR technology as the cost of it becomes reduced; it currently costs approximately €25,000 for the most professional and economical AR solutions. 

Is your business’ IT department ready for integrating Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality into the workplace? A recent article on Computerworld.com addresses this question, describing the differences between each of the technologies and the benefits they provide for enterprises.

Many industry experts are interviewed and quoted throughout the article, including the AREA’s Executive Director Mark Sage. Other organisations mentioned include:

• AREA member Boeing
• AREA member Bosch
• Microsoft
• Gartner
• G2 Crowd
• EY
• Apple
• Case Western Reserve University
• Cleveland Clinic

Significant points mentioned in the article include:

• Companies generally utilise AR technology to solve certain business problems or for particular use cases
• Both AR and VR are potentially useful for collaboration and design in the construction and engineering industry
• The technology is a big investment due to the need for old legacy systems to be improved to allow it to function as it should
• Security and privacy issues are a current concern due to constant, wireless sharing of information
• AR for B2B is said to be ahead of AR for B2C, but VR is the opposite, and this is expected to continue over the next three or so years
• In the next two to three years, it is anticipated that AR will go mainstream for jobs such as repairs, design, logistics, field service, and warehouse
• Recruiting staff with the right expertise for using the technology is important for implementing an AR strategy

You can find out more about how some of the companies mentioned (Boeing, Cleveland Clinic, and Bosch) have been using AR technology. There are further details about how you can get started and become ready for AR VR and MR for your business in the full article here.