An increasing number of IT companies and startups showcased AR related products and this year’s CES and MWC.  Readers may be interested in a report that has also been released, providing an overview of the latest development of AR and VR Smart Glasses which also examines the potential of Smart Glasses in the future.

Some of the main points that have been listed in the report include:

• Analysis of key issues that are likely to affect the potential of Augmented Reality Smart Glasses
• Development timeline of key vendors in different development phases
• Latest development of Augmented Reality Smart Glasses and includes accumulated shipment volume forecast by market sector for the period 2015-2020

Main vendors that are mentioned in this report include:

• AREA Members; Atheer, DAQRI

Other vendors include ODG, Caputer, Epson, Facebook, Fujitsu, Glass Up, Google, Intel, Konia, Kopin and Magic Leap.

To read the report in full click here.

Finger Food Studios, is developing a new interactive scenographic tool for Microsoft HoloLens according to their press release. It is being tested in a show creation context by Cirque du Soleil. Finger Food’s innovative holographic set design tool took centre stage at the Microsoft Build (MS Build) conference Day 2 Keynote.

During the Keynote, HoloLens creator Alex Kipman invited Cirque du Soleil to demonstrate Finger Food’s Mixed Reality scenographic tool. This full-scale holographic tool can not only save on time and costs, but also allow for greater creative freedom and collaboration.

As demonstrated on stage yesterday, Finger Foods’ scenographic tool enables the creation of interactive 3D blocks and shapes that can be quickly transformed into a full scale rendering of a stage, including holographic performers. A tool like this would enable creative teams to work together to imagine, test and bring life to their ideas at full scale even before the first casting session or any building begins.

To read their full press release click here.

PRESS RELEASE: Canadian Tech Firm debuts HoloBridge IoT data visualization framework at Hannover Messe Industrial Fair

Finger Food Studios becomes OSIsoft’s first Red Carpet Incubation Program (RCIP) Mixed Reality Developer with Deschutes Brewery Demo.

Working with OSIsoft LLC and Microsoft, Finger Food has created an innovative holographic application for top US craft brewery, Deschutes.

With HoloBridge, Finger Food brought Deschutes’ data to a new level of understanding. Drawing on Finger Food’s strengths in game design and development, user interaction and collaboration, the company created a way for Deschutes to not just see, but interact with their data at scale.

Finger Food’s Mixed Reality (MR) application features life-size holographic brewery equipment with live streaming data, offering context and insights from the PI Integrator for Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Cortana Intelligence ready to be viewed and analyzed.

To read the full press release by Finger Food Studios please click here.

I remember the day in 1992 when I learned about this new way to get information: it was called Gopher. Via my modem on a phone line that I was using for CompuServe access, I connected my computer to a server. The next year I installed the first browser, Mosaic, on my Apple Macintosh and experienced the Web for the first time. I never asked myself whether there were standards involved but, of course, we know now that they played a role in the Web becoming what it is today. An array of standards gives you the ability to read this page on any device.

Technology standards for interoperability have a long history. The emergence of the Web, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to define and maintain standards for it, is within memory for some of those reading this page but there are many other industries that had to develop standards as they went. Some adopted standards after experiencing some painful lessons. For example, the plugs and outlets that people use to connect devices to the electrical grid all conform to the power standards defined and adopted in their country. The fact that there are national standards, and not international ones, was a painful lesson. As recently as 15 years ago, we had to carry transformers and plug adapters around with us if we wanted to use household appliances or computers designed for one national standard in places with different standards.

Folks with whom I was working at the time I started using the Web were developing interoperability standards for telephone networks. The regional Bell Operating Companies were trying out new technologies (not only those developed in Bell Labs and provided by “Ma Bell”). They wanted to go around AT&T to reach long distance operators in Europe and elsewhere. My exposure in the mid-1990s to the challenges that they were addressing marked me. There are compelling business imperatives behind the telephone interoperability standards requirement. Standards are the basis for large, highly complex systems reaching millions of people and billions of dollars of revenues. The key concept here: scalability.

Jump ahead to 2009

I had been working in Augmented Reality for several years but it wasn’t until 2009 that devices capable of offering the general public their first mobile AR experiences (smartphones with cameras and GPS) hit the market. As you’ll read in this post by Thomas K. Carpenter, a lot happened in AR that year. A 2009 post on Adweek asked whether 2010 would the “year of Augmented Reality.” 

2009 is the year I heard Mike Liebhold and Damon Hernandez refer to “Open AR” in the context of a workshop co-organized by the Institute for the Future. I had an “ah ha!” moment. I felt that if AR was going to really reach its full potential, it was time to begin advocating for interoperability of components and services for Augmented Reality. In order for AR technology to scale, to integrate with everything—every person, place and thing on the planet—it cannot operate in a vacuum. It must be part of the full technology equation. It must benefit from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and Big Data. AR must be integrated and combined with a host of other underlying technologies to become the user interface for the Internet of Things, our communications and collaboration platforms, and even our power grid. Well, the interface for the physical world. In short, AR components must be interoperable.

In conjunction with Mobile World Congress 2010 and with the support of Dan Appelquist (then at Vodafone, now at Samsung), I organized the first workshop about barriers to the growth of mobile AR. There were many barriers.

Is now the time?

Many of those obstacles we talked about in 2010 are lower today, but low interoperability remains on the list of critical barriers. Over the following years, while talking about this issue and in the context of a dozen more meetings of members of the grassroots Community for Open and Interoperable Augmented Reality, I’ve listened to hundreds of people defend proprietary technologies as part of their Augmented Reality pipeline. Many of them make strong cases for and experience the benefits of their innovating without observing standards. But, many technologies remain limited in their reach and impact. Their ability to enable AR to evolve and spread to new use cases is lower without interoperability.

Phone companies and energy companies have understood for decades that, due to the business model of their providers, closed technology silos have a role but are not scalable. Proprietary technology silos enable one company to define a vertically-integrated stack, suite, or system of components such that developments are entirely under the control of the provider. The provider decides when and how much investment is in the total system or in any part.

Interoperability of data and components with which to deploy AR features in enterprise IT are key requirements for large customers in many industries, but they are currently unmet. Due to the risk of closed AR technology silos delaying or controlling their future investment into AR, many large enterprises are holding back. To change their position, stakeholders in AR must take all steps necessary to accelerate the emergence and success of open and interoperable AR.

I’m not alone in expressing this position. For over seven years, I have had the pleasure of working with other people around the world who share the vision of widespread AR based on interoperability. One of those is John Simmins, a technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

In 2016, John and I asked ourselves whether all the conditions would soon align, whether we were getting closer to the AR interoperability threshold. To answer this question, we embarked on an EPRI research project designed to assess all the standards and projects to date and to inform the broader community of stakeholders about the importance of interoperability.

What’s your answer?

The first output of this project, the EPRI Enterprise Augmented Reality Vision, Interoperability Requirements, and Standards Landscape report was released last week. Like the development of standards by members of the W3C when the Web was young, this report is public and designed to serve the whole ecosystem of stakeholders.

And, similar to the work initiated by the SmartGrid Interoperability Panel (originally put in place with the assistance of NIST) for ensuring the future of Smart Grid, this report proposes an interoperability framework.

The AR Interoperability Framework (source: EPRI Enterprise Augmented Reality Vision, Interoperability Requirements, and Standards Landscape Report).

The EPRI report provides the current landscape of relevant standards in the context of the new framework as well as in the AR authoring, publishing and presentation pipeline and the MAR Reference Model. Never before have all the different standards activities that have been started and could contribute to interoperable AR, been cataloged and described in this level of detail. It’s not a light read. It’s a reference work.

The release of the EPRI report is a milestone, but only as important as what follows. Interoperability is still poorly understood by many stakeholders and difficult to achieve in the best of circumstances. That means that this report must be more than a catalog to capture the status of standards in early 2017. It is released at no cost and without restriction so that it can become a discussion starter and the basis for many types of workshops and meetings, and other forms of stakeholder collaboration.

Collaboration Matters

The cover image we chose (which appears at the top of this post) focuses on the interoperability problem and the need for multiple stakeholder to focus and collaborate on the topic. If you feel that interoperability is important for AR to scale now or in the future, we invite you to contribute to the discussion with your colleagues. Organize your own workshops, or look for and participate in meetings organized by others. And, so that we may include them in updates to the report, please let us know about your activities as new standards and/or activities emerge. 

An article on Automation World tells us how Smart connected products, combined with Augmented and Virtual Reality tools, are transforming how the company, Caterpillar, services equipment and interacts with customers.

The article talks us through its customer service offerings in the areas of the three industries it serves —resource industries (mining), construction, and energy/transportation (power/compulsion systems for marine, oil & gas, turbines and locomotives).

Today, service is evolving again, as it is done remotely using telematics devices that can do onboard diagnostics and send alerts and diagnostic codes back to the equipment experts. In addition, Caterpillar is now moving into the next layer of technology in the service domain which includes the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), as well as Augmented and Virtual Reality.

The company’s modern technology mission: “To be cheaper, smarter and faster,” said Terri Lewis, digital and technology director at Caterpillar, during her keynote presentation at the Automation Conference & Expo.

In fact, the Caterpillar IIoT initiative was launched as a vision in the 1990s with a goal of leveraging the Internet for service. Today, the company has 186 dealers and about 500,000 connected assets around the world upon which service technicians can conduct an inspection simply by sending photos for analysis via a smartphone.

“We have entire mine sites connected and interacting to make split-second decisions,” Lewis said. “Now we want to connect people and products.”

In the not-too-distant future—about three years—Caterpillar will be using Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) for sales, operations and service applications, Lewis said.

The article concludes with a mention by Lewis of the AR lessons learned: the use of the new technology means that challenges have been overcome.

An article on Machine Design.com under the section ‘industrial automation’, which postulates on the recent developments in IIoT which have brought about great potential for AR to revolutionise the manufacturing sector.

The article states that in fact, AR completes the entire digital ecosystem as a part of Industry 4.0. It connects workers with equipment, letting them interact with sensor data to identify exact components that need maintenance, replacement, or upgrading.

The article goes on to give an of how Augmented Reality is being used in manufacturing by Thyssenkrupp, a leader in elevator manufacturing, already uses AR to guide workers during maintenance using Microsoft HoloLens, a self-contained, wearable holographic computer. The smart glasses let workers inspect the elevator virtually before going to the site. Once there, they can quickly identify components that need replacement or maintenance. They can also instantly access tutorial videos or talk to trainers in real-time for assistance. The company also uses AR to measure stairs and capture digital point-cloud data needed for quickly designing and manufacturing stairlifts.

Developing lightweight 3D CAD models for AR is one area seeing significant activity. Native 3D CAD models are large and represent actual products to be manufactured, including all of the nuts and bolts. However, the detailed native CAD product model is not fit for AR visualization. For AR purposes, the models need to load quickly. And that is why re-modeling or a conversion process is needed. Although part of this conversion can be automated through AR publishing tools, it still takes a manual effort to ensure the details required in the AR environment aren’t compromised.

To read the full article, please click here.

A press release dated May 30 2017 reveals that THX, a leading provider of superior audio-visual experiences, has partnered with ODG (Osterhout Design Group), a leading developer of Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Smartglasses, to pave the way for excellence in headworn devices.

The driving force of the partnership is the new THX Virtual Cinema Display Certification program, which ensures a world-class viewing experience for Augmented and Virtual Reality Wearable devices.  

The ODG R-9 smartglasses will become the first THX certified product in the program, setting the standard for display excellence and a high bar for future headworn certifications. It will ensure that the R-9 glasses, and any future devices that are certified, are calibrated to the same color and resolution standards that are used in professional Hollywood studios, giving consumers access to visual content from the ‘best seat in the house’, no matter where they are.  

“Augmented reality is the future of audio and visual advancement,” explained Bill Rusitzky, CRO of THX Ltd. “We chose to partner with ODG to certify their product’s best-in-class cinematic experience because we are dedicated to establishing high standards in next-generation technologies, as we have achieved with existing technologies over the past 30 years. We are excited to continue this commitment to consumers, and come together with ODG to deliver premium AV experiences in a very new way.”

The full press release can be read here.

Wilhelmsen Ship Services (WSS) will be revealing their Augmented Reality project at Nor-shipping 2017. This new technology, according to Seatrade Maritime News, allows visitors to see WSS’ latest products inside and out. You can download an app onto your phone and scan a printed image to unlock the AR system.

Kjell Andre Engen, evp marine products for WSS says “AR helps us illustrate what really makes our maritime specific solutions portfolio tick and we believe it will change how and why customers make their purchasing decisions Although being showcased as a marketing tool at an exhibition WSS believes the AR system has much wider uses in the maritime industry. With the app able to combine a desk worth of product catalogues, manuals and data sheets Engen said AR would become “absolutely invaluable for crew training.”

This new AR project was developed in conjunction with Imagination Computer Serv. using their Magic Lens software. Wilhelmsen Ship Services will be demonstrating this AR system at the Nor-shipping 2017.

ITC Infotech, a global service provider of technology solutions, announced in a press release (May 22 2017) that they will collaborate with AREA member PTC and Oracle to provide an Augmented Reality solution for Connected Service.

ITC Infotech, a Platinum level and Cloud Standard member of Oracle PartnerNetwork and long-standing strategic partner with PTC, developed this solution by drawing upon proficiencies and expertise in delivering Customer Experience (CX) and digital transformations for Service across a multitude of industries. This solution is aimed at improving self-service, assisted service & field service interactions for B2C and B2B industries. Improved service outcomes and a stellar service experience is expected to enable customers to improve top line and bottom line growth while also enabling them to expand their market share.

“The collaboration among Oracle, PTC, and ITC Infotech gives us the opportunity to explore how our existing CX products can enrich AR technology to deliver a more robust consumer experience across Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle IoT Cloud, and Oracle Commerce Cloud,” said Shon Wedde, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle. “We are excited to address the possibilities of AR across self-service, assisted service, and field service,” he added.

The full press release can be read here.

This is the third in a series of blog posts following the progress being made on the AREA’s first research project. Read the first two installments here and here.

In February 2016, the AREA performed a preliminary analysis of the field of enterprise AR security. We learned that there was virtually nothing available about the topic on the Web, low understanding among customers and suppliers, and only a few firms, such as AREA member Augmate, were exploring how to identify and address issues.

As has recently been demonstrated by the global “ransomware” attack and the Distributed Denial of Service attack caused by security breaches on webcams and IoT devices in October 2016, governments, businesses and consumers reliant on Internet-connected computers are increasingly more vulnerable to risk. In the final days of 2016, analysts and cybersecurity experts predicted that “2017 will be a critical year for security, starting with how it’s built into technology. DevOps and security will change the way they work together as they realize the need to integrate with each other in order to survive.”

Unfortunately, very little attention has been focused on enterprise AR security risks since the exploratory project in early 2016 but it’s my conviction that no one in the AR ecosystem can afford to continue ignoring or denying the security issues. Many AREA members agree that there is potentially a problem.

In April, the AREA kicked off its Research Committee’s first project with Brainwaive LLC. Brainwaive’s team of cybersecurity experts has been digging into topics pertaining to data security risks when introducing new, wearable Augmented Reality devices in the enterprise. I’m managing this project on behalf of the AREA’s members.

The project team is preparing reports to help AREA members understand the issues and prepare for the mitigation of risks. These reports are based on experience in security mitigation frameworks and tactics in IoT and other fields, interviews with different AR ecosystem stakeholders, and online research, as well as hands-on testing of wearable AR devices. The hands-on testing exposed many interesting risks as well as opportunities. The value these reports contain can’t be conveyed in a few posts on a blog. The reports will deliver practical approaches to those who will study them carefully.

What I can share that concerns me greatly as I have listened to interviews Brainwaive has recently conducted is the apparent desire by many of the stakeholders involved in wearable AR device development (and the greater AR experience design and development value chain) to pass the buck on security. There’s a widespread assumption that wearable AR devices will be managed similarly to or in the same fashion as other mobile devices. The weakness in this thinking is that, unlike wearable AR displays currently being furnished for developer use, mobile devices deployed for enterprise use are security-hardened.

Sooner or later, the prevalent “it’s not my problem” mindset must change if we expect enterprise IT managers to embrace new devices and support systems enabling the changes that AR promises to deliver. For the mindset to change we need:

• AR customers to put security mitigation as high on their list of requirements as low latency, wide Field of View and ease of use; and
• enterprise AR technology providers to collaborate with security community leaders to design wearable AR displays with security by default, not an add-on.

If you are an AR customer who has already put data security features on your AR requirements list, please use the comments section of this blog post to share with others in our community how you have stated those requirements.

If you are a wearable AR device manufacturer who has included security features by design, please make those features more clear so that the Brainwaive team, among others, can more easily evaluate and include them in the AREA’s upcoming security framework.

Those who wish to preserve their anonymity while contributing to this important project are invited to contact Tony Hodgson, CEO of Brainwaive, directly via e-mail at [email protected].