At the conclusion of each year many groups attempt to predict the most important developments of the next year. Forbes has published on its blog a post contributed by Sarwant Singh predicting that Augmented Reality will go mainstream in 2016. Unfortunately, the brief analysis provided in the third of sixteen bullets on the topic of Augmented Reality focuses on Virtual Reality, demonstrating that the Forbes futurists themselves, assisted by the Visionary Innovation Group at Frost & Sullivan, need to spend a little more time studying the definitions of the terms they are using.

On the other hand, perhaps this is not a situation of incorrect terminology but the futurists are predicting Oculus (Facebook) will release a new Augmented Reality product in its Rift line in 2016, making the prediction correct, or less incorrect.

Unfortunately, the team developing these predictions also neglected to mention that enterprises will be actively adopting the technology and could be responsible, far more than consumers, for the growth of Augmented Reality in 2016.

Despite these weaknesses in the bullet about Augmented Reality, other predictions are also of interest to the readers of the AREA.

DHL Germany has been getting Augmented Reality-enabling technology into the hands of users for several years through pilots and even in live logistics workflows. The company has announced that it is expanding its new technology demonstration and maturation initiatives with a new Innovation Center in Singapore.

The center will showcase some of the latest technologies that the global company has adopted to improve productivity including Augmented Reality for drivers to learn how to use forklifts, smart glasses to detect correct parcels, and self-driving vehicles.

“Hands free” is a simple concept but when someone uses their hands in the physical world, they also need ways to “naturally” control the digital world assets they want to use. Automatic gesture recognition is one of the ways of interacting with digital content on hands-free delivery platforms. It’s not built into the optics or some other component before a smart glasses manufacturer introduces it.

For Atheer, an AREA sponsor member and provider of the AiR platform, gesture recognition is and has been a strategic differentiator. That position was deepened with the acquisition of ONtheGO Platforms, a developer of gesture recognition technology. In a press release issued by Atheer, the company states that ONtheGO adds three issued and six pending patents to Atheer’s IP portfolio of gesture interaction and rich visuality technologies, bringing the total to 14 issued patents and nearly 50 additional pending patents.

These technologies will be further integrated and gradually introduced in future editions of the Atheer AiR Glasses and the collaboration-centric AiR Enterprise Suite.

We spend a lot of time looking at flat objects and surfaces but, in reality, the world is mostly three dimensional. That’s why enterprises need support for 3D capture and visualization of 3D assets in their Augmented Reality systems. As obvious as it sounds and as fundamental a requirement for success it is, stable and robust 3D tracking is very difficult on any platform, especially for mobile devices.

That said, most authoring and delivery systems worthy of consideration for enterprise Augmented Reality offer 3D tracking for small and simple objects with texture. The more texture the better. A few months ago, Wikitude introduced a beta of 3D for small spaces in their SDK. They designed it to work on a space about the size of a desk.

As the size of the 3D space a system maps increases, the challenges change. There are more shadows and occlusions. There is more potential for calibration issues. Outdoor differs completely from indoors. Getting 3D to work reliably in large spaces is not easy. The author of this post on the Wikitude blog explains how computer vision engineers have tackled the problem and have released the first beta of their SDK’s new 3D tracking features.

Download the WikiWings Android app to test it first hand, if you want to test the current state of their technology.

Building job sites can be very dangerous. Projects or products that lower risk to workers get the attention of managers. When those who offer Augmented Reality solutions can reliably demonstrate that the technology raises awareness of those on a job site to potential risk so that danger can be reduced, AR will be taken more seriously. Creating solutions that reduce more risk than they introduce is not easy.

Collaboration will go further and produce customer-ready products than direct competition among vendors that only master some of the components of the final system.

Partnerships of the type described in the announcement issued by Topcon Positioning Group bring expertise in different domains to bear on the common challenges. In this partnership DAQRI is bringing its helmet technology and 4D Studio to bear on the presentation of informational messages. The systems the two companies plan to offer to AEC industry customers will leverage Topcon’s deep understanding of its industries (including construction, agriculture, forestry, mining and utilities) and effectiveness of GPS products and services.

More partnerships of this nature, between technology providers and solution providers in AEC or in other industries, could be very valuable to accelerating enterprise AR adoption.

After a three-month trial involving up to 30 employees in various areas such as windshields or driveshafts of the Wolfsburg plant, Volkswagen has issued a press release stating that it has determined the system to be effective and in the near future plant logistics personnel will use the system for order picking. According to the release “the objective is to further improve process security in production.”

The system may have been developed in house because there is no mention of a software integrator or hardware partner. And, while the announcement states that the system trialled and proposed a 3D element, the images provided to accompany the release are of a user wearing Google Glass, which does not have support for 3D images or 3D capture.

One of the interesting components of the announcement indicates that the Works Council, the equivalent of a worker’s union, was also involved in the pilot. A spokesperson attests that the use of the system was voluntary and favorably received. It seems that health, safety and occupational medicine criteria have yet to be established but that could follow when feedback from employees is gathered after daily use.

Testimonials are rare in enterprise Augmented Reality so when a customer describes their use cases and the benefits of implementing solutions, even if the system is not full optical see-through Augmented Reality, it’s important to share the outcomes with others that may be considering similar projects.

For the past two years Ubimax has worked with WS Kunststoff-Service (German), a manufacturer of plastic components for the automotive industry, to develop and improve the use of Vuzix M100 and similar hardware with Ubimax xMake software and platform. The xMake software application places step-by-step assembly instructions in the display so that the user does not need to stop their procedure to go to the next step or to verify compliance.

In this video, the customer describes the current state of the art for worker guidance applications in the WS Kunststoff-Service factory. The company reports that the system is used for training workers as well as in production environments. The manager of the project predicts that the system will offer long-term competitive advantage through higher speed assembly, error reductions (perhaps even the elimination of errors) and greater flexibility on the factory floor.

Today’s smart glasses for Augmented Reality have problems. Some do not have sufficient transparency. Others offer only a narrow field of view. Many are too heavy to wear comfortably for more than brief periods. Most are not designed for high volume manufacturing at an affordable price point.

The race to address these issues and access the next user interface technology continues to heat up with new entrants almost every month.

According to an announcement on the VTT Research website, Dispelix, a VTT spin off, is going to begin commercializing technology that will address several of the issues. The announcement says that the company is ready to manufacture at volume, but first needs to raise some funds and develop its distribution partner network. Those are not trivial issues.

On the technical side, the description suggests that the 1 mm thick (thin) lightguide can be applied, as a film, on plastic or glass lenses. It is highly transparent and, as a result of high flexibility, it can be shaped. There will be monochrome and color options with, presumably, the monochrome offering significant power savings.

Further details should come out in 2016 when the company plans to ship its first customer deliveries.

Over 20 years ago research projects demonstrated projection Augmented Reality to assist a desk worker but very few commercial or residential implementations were built and the technology seemingly lost in favor by comparison with mobile and wearable systems. Perhaps the tides are changing.

According to short analyses published on Wired UK website and on CBRonline news site, the US patent office has published patents granted to Amazon and Apple that build upon those early demonstrations. Amazon’s patent describes “a room equipped with computerized projection and imaging systems that enable presentation of images on various objects within the room to facilitate user interaction with the images and/or objects” while Apple’s uses two cameras to scan a room and then projects images onto objects detected.

The Apple patent also describes an “improved content projection device, which is aware of objects in its field of view, recognizes such objects as suitable for projection of content thereon.” Other research projects similar in design and purpose have been described in the published literature but remain uncommercialized.

It remains to be seen if the systems described in these patents are approaching the level of maturity that would be useful in enterprise environments, but others, such as OPS Solutions that provides Light Guide Systems, are proving that spaces in which objects are already well mapped are very suitable with current camera and projection technologies.

In a recent webinar produced by Harvard Business Review (HBR), co-authors Michael Porter and Jim Hepplemann, CEO of PTC, summarized concepts presented in their article entitled “How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies” and discussed the implications of these new technologies. The primary emphasis is on the use of sensors and other embedded technologies into products, and how by using the data generated by the connected products, companies can be more informed about how their customers are using the products.

The co-authors stress how important it will be for companies to embrace not only technologies but also organizational changes. Without both, the benefits of either are far less significant.

During the webinar (play the archive below), both Porter and Hepplemann repeatedly described how, using Augmented Reality as a UI, the assembly and use of smart connected products will become commonplace, reducing the need for training in complex procedures. The power of Augmented Reality can also be applied to increase end user customers’ ability to leverage new features in more complex and intelligent products as a result of the dynamic interfaces that AR-assisted systems can offer.

HBR provides a link to download the webinar slides.