One of the world’s oldest technology companies is investing in the Virtual Reality market by becoming an investor in The Venture Reality Fund.

HP Tech Ventures which is a new corporate venture arm of HP have recently joined the VR Fund as an investor. HP Tech Ventures have become one of the most active investors in Augmented Reality, VR and Mixed Reality start-ups.

According to the article released this week the VR Fund will be providing HP with early access to leading AR, VR and MR technologies with commercial applications in HP’s target markets which include office, retail, health care, manufacturing and education. This investment means that the VR Fund in turn will benefit from HP’s product portfolio and reach.

In a statement from Marco DeMiroz, Cofounder and General Partner of The VR Fund said “HP has a rich history of delivering innovative technology and was an early believer in the vast potential for mix reality to transform consumer and commercial markets. We are excited to have HP Tech Ventures as a key investor in our fund and look forward to working closely with their team to introduce new applications for corporate innovation and productivity, while enhancing the customer experience and product development.”

In 2016 Venture capital investments in AR and VR reached £1.8 billion and according to the article Goldman Sachs estimates this market to reach $80 billion by 2025. VR Fund is part of HP’s growing network of partners developing next generation Mixed Reality applications, head-mounted displays and mobile solutions and services.

This two-day Emerging Technologies event was organized by Chariot Solutions, an IT consulting company located in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. It included a keynote by Augmented Reality Pioneer Blair MacIntyre.  Other speakers were:

Monica Beckwith (JVM performance consultant at Oracle)

Andrea Goulet (CEO at Corgibytes)

Yehuda Katz (Co-Creator of Ember.js)

Jessica Kerr (lead Engineer at Atomist)

Jake Wharton (Android Engineer at Square)

Augmented Reality Pioneer, Blair MacIntyre, kicked off the day one activities with a keynote address entitled The Web as Platform for Augmented Reality Experiences. MacIntyre defined Augmented Reality as “mixing media with a person’s perception of the world registered in 3D, in real time.”  MacIntyre explored the past, present, and possible future of augmented reality from Ivan Sutherland’s The Ultimate Display in 1968 to head mounted displays that could one day look like regular glasses.

For a full recap of Day 1, the article by InfoQ can be read here 

The Smart Glass in Automotive Market 2017 Research Report investigates a thorough and complete study of the Smart Glasses in Automotive industry by volume, market share and market trends.  Growth Aspects for Smart Glass in Automotive are discussed, along with a wide range of applications, utilization ratio, supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity and price during the forecast period, 2017 to 2022.

The report, labelled Global Smart Glass in Automotive Market 2017 concentrates on the complete analysis of the present and past historical details of Smart Glass in the automotive market. The report is segmented into many sections including regions which include The United States, EU, China and Japan. The report also mentions the key players that are involved in this market:

• AGC
• PPG Industries
• SmartGlass International Ltd
• SAGE Electrochromics
• Gentex
• Hitachi Chemicals
• View, inc
• Glass Apps LLC
• Research Frontiers
• Scienstry, Inc
• RavenBrick
• Pleotint

This report also gives an analysis of the feasibility of investment, investment return analysis and shows a complete picture of market development scope and business strategies followed by leading Smart Glass in Automotive Industry players along with their company profile, market share and contact information.

In a recent article by Vrfocus.com Vuzix, supplier of Mixed and Augmented Reality Smart Glasses have announced their new business partners. These 3 new partners will be added to the list of European Vuzix Industrial Partners.

One of Vuzix new partnerships is with Augumenta, a Finnish firm which develops applications for operations such as production line control. Tero Aaltonen, CEO of Augumenta has said “We started our smart glass journey by introducing an interaction SDK that brought gesture controls and virtual keypads to the hands of enterprise developers. We are now expanding our offering by introducing a suite of ready-made applications and a configuration tool that allows our customers to quickly adopt and integrate Augumenta software with their existing IT systems. Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses play an important role in this game with their rugged design and impressive battery life, and we’re proud to promote them as the primary device for our SmartAlert product.”

The second firm that has been announced to join Vuzix are a company based in Germany which provide systems with remote technical support and systems for technical domination, DOSCO. Managing Director of DOSCO, Robert Erfle has spoken about this partnership and has said “Being part of the VIP program gives us direct access to the resources of Vuzix and will significantly support the development and distribution of our solutions for smart glasses, in particular for the new M300.”

The last company announced our Brochesia, which provide wearable devises for heavy industries which are headquartered in Rome. Chief Technology Officer Christian Salvatori commented “Being a Vuzix VIP Partner grants Brochesia early access to the latest Vuzix smart glasses and SDK packages enabling us to upgrade and test our solutions to support.”

Readers may be interested in an event taking place to discuss VR, AR and the Law. An event is scheduled to take place 6:00pm – 7:30pm on May 4^th 2017 with speaker Professor Mark Lemley.

Professor Mark Lemley is Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology and the Director of Stanford’s LLM Program.  The talk addresses ways in which Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality will affect our work, social and leisure experiences as well as our society and related issues of the law.

If you are interested in attending this event then you can register by clicking on the link https://www.mofo.com/resources/events/170504-law-virtual-reality.html

An increasing number of articles are starting to give Augmented Reality more popularity around the internet recently, which in part is down to the buzz surrounding the AR Global requirements workshop held in Chicago in March this year.

Though it’s been around for years in various forms, Augmented Reality is starting to draw heightened interest from the tech industry.  Nods to Facebook, Apple, Asus and Magic Leap are mentioned in notable examples to watch out for in a recent article. It is good to see industry AR attracting positive mention in the news:

Many companies and industry experts are starting to see augmented reality as the next evolution of computing. In the future, you may read your email, watch videos or play games not on your smartphone, television or laptop, but via special kinds of glasses that have built-in, transparent displays.

Industry experts also think AR will play a big role in communication and in education. AR could offer a new form of telepresence; wearing an AR headset, a person could potentially see an image of a friend or co-worker that appeared to be sitting in the chair next to them as they carried on a conversation. And instead of having to go to Wikipedia to find out about a piece of art or a sculpture, an AR app or headset might simply provide you with that information when you just looked at it.

In 2015, cybercrime damage cost the world $3 trillion, according to one estimate. By 2021, that number is expected to grow to $6 trillion. So any enterprise contemplating new IT investments is paying particular attention to the security ramifications. AR is no exception. When introducing mobile, wearable AR systems to the enterprise, there is a high level of concern about data security. Headset and smart glasses designers are rarely data security experts, and their unconventional connected systems can represent new kinds of cyber threats to enterprise businesses.

The AREA recently commissioned an important study with Brainwaive LLC, headquartered in Huntsville, AL, to evaluate this mission-critical topic and help AREA members better understand and mitigate these risks. Tony Hodgson, CEO of Brainwaive – a cyber security and emerging technology advisory to enterprise clients – explained elements of the study.

“Initially, we’re creating the first-ever comprehensive report to identify and characterize the data security risks enterprise IT managers should be concerned about,” said Hodgson. “Our veteran cyber experts are then drawing from similar experiences they’ve had leading initiatives, such as development of the Industrial Internet Security Framework for IoT solutions (IISF) and IEEE data security standards, to create an AREA-branded Enterprise AR Security Framework.

We’re also creating a powerful AR Device Testing Protocol, so enterprise IT managers can thoroughly evaluate threat vectors and use-case suitability of different wearable AR systems.”

Also, AR device manufacturers will have new tools to evaluate their solutions before sending them into the marketplace.

“No one can eliminate all these evolving threats, but it will certainly help AR system developers sleep better at night knowing they’ve run their device through a comprehensive analysis to understand their defensive posture,” said Hodgson. “It will also provide them with a strong and supportable answer when clients ask, ‘How safe are your systems, anyway?’.”

Tony Hodgson is looking forward to making an impact with the research project.

“It’s exciting because AR-enabled systems are really beginning to emerge on the enterprise scene,” he said. “But the menagerie of devices and all the different ways they can be used presents new, invisible routes that malicious actors will take to dodge your defenses and infect your networks. This work sponsored by the AREA will certainly help companies understand what’s under the hood of these unique devices, so they can identify and mitigate these risks.”

News has emerged this week about Fitbit being in talks with the NHS about wearables.  Fitbit Co-founder and Chief Executive James Park, has spoken to the Sunday Times, said talks had taken place with executives in the health service but no firm plans had been agreed.

The news comes almost two years after NHS England announced moves to promote wearables to monitor patients with long-term conditions.

In June 2015, Tim Kelsey, the former NHS England national director for patients and information, said that by 2018 members of the public will be able to add data from wearable devices to their electronic patient record.  But there have been few details in the two years since the announcement.

The 2015 target came as part of a commitment to give patients real-time access to their full electronic health record by 2018.

A deal with health insurer UnitedHealthcare in the US saves users cash in terms of a cheaper premium based on how much exercise they take using data monitored from the wristband.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the NHS would “make very big moves in the next 12 months into apps and wearables” late last year. NHS England now has an app library which recommends reputable health apps to patients.

Wearables were once seen as an up-and-coming area of technology but have gone off the boil in recent years after failing to live up to the hype as a consumer must-have device.

Fitbit has made cutbacks recently and is said to have lost more than 80 per cent of its value since its IPO in 2015. The firm is now seeking to work more with businesses wanting to provide “wellness programmes” for employees, health insurers and other parts of the healthcare system in a bid to turn the company around.

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.”

A recent article on BizTechMagazine.com asks whether AR for Industrial workers is about to take off. As AR technology matures, it is finding application in the energy and utilities market as well as other manufacturing and industrial use cases.

The article links The AREA and DMDII’s announcement of the first hardware and software standards for AR in industrial settings, Global AR Requirements. There are positive performance indicators across the market as early adopters of industrial AR are moving into more substantial deployments. The article mentions ODG’s announcement of new AR Smart Glasses for use in hazardous locations for example, oil exploration and production, energy, mining, utilities, chemical production and pharmaceuticals.

The AR Requirements 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.

The full article can be read at http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article/2017/04/augmented-reality-industrial-workers-about-take