Etisalat, the multinational UAE-based telecom provider serving customers in 18 countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa, has announced plans to conduct trials of smart glasses. Government agencies and enterprise customers of Etisalat will explore the business potential of smart glasses in logistics, construction, automotive, oil and gas, field maintenance and retail use cases.

Although no details about the providers of hardware to be tested are shared in the announcement issued by Ubimax, the primary content delivery and presentation platform partner, one would expect Ubimax preferred suppliers mentioned by the company (e.g., Vuzix and Google) to be involved.

The announcement is important for at least two reasons. It suggests that the potential to improve business processes and increase efficiency with contextually displayed information is getting attention among business leaders in the Middle East region. While businesses in all geographic regions are sensitive to risk and seek to avoid unnecessary costs, the fact that CIOs and CTOs in wealthy, oil-producing nations with large service industries are being exposed to these new technologies could pave the way for introduction of smart glasses in some very large scale projects.

The second aspect of this announcement that is intriguing is that Etisalat, a telecommunication service provider, is taking the lead. The article in Khallej Times about this announcement suggests that, if the trials produce useful results and demonstrate customer demand, hands-free displays and wearable devices bundled with AR delivery could be offered as a way to entice those customers to switch to next generation (5G) services. Other telecommunications service providers that have previously explored AR services include SK Telecom and Telecom Italia.

In many environments where Augmented Reality can provide benefits, explosion-proof devices, such as cameras and displays, are a requirement. Bartec Pixavi, a Norwegian company specializing in R&D of ATEX and Ex certified video conferencing solutions, cameras and Wi-Fi infrastructure, has introduced the latest version of its explosion-proof, WiFi-enabled wearable camera that could be valuable to systems integrators of AR solutions.

The product page on the Pixavi website says that the Orbit X is lightweight, battery-operated, designed to be mounted at eye level and to transmit the “eyesight” of users in the field. The Orbit X streams 1080p video wirelessly from users in zone 1 hazardous areas while also supporting duplex audio communication over WiFi. It can also record images and video locally.

Use cases range from inspection and maintenance to emergency response.

There are many situations in which an employee needs wearables for Augmented Reality because they must use their hands to perform tasks. In this post on Philipp Rauschnabel’s blog, the author summarizes an interview recently conducted for Mobile Business, a German business publication. The focus is on the benefits of hands-free displays such as smart glasses in logistics.

The primary benefits are to reduce distraction, offer navigation within a warehouse, quickly address rare or new situations and unforeseen problems, and make relevant information faster to find and easier to use.

In addition to use cases that provide instant access to orders and other facility information, the possibility of offering remote experts to assist a worker in the warehouse is very attractive to planners.

Personality types are known to impact many aspects of our daily life, including user acceptance of having to wear unusual hardware for the purpose of having Augmented Reality experiences. A scientific publication on ResearchGate.com describes several studies conducted by Philipp Rauschnabel, Alexander Brem and Bjoern Ivens on the direct and moderating effects of human personality on the awareness and innovation adoption of smart glasses.

The study suggests that those with personalities that are open and extroverted are more likely to already be aware of smart glasses such as Google Glass. It follows naturally that those who perceive the potential for benefits and social conformity of smart glasses are more likely to adopt such wearables. According to the authors, the strength of these effects is moderated by an individual’s level of openness to new experiences.

Findings like these could help the development and validation of new processes that help AR project managers select the best users with which to work on enterprise Augmented Reality pilots, proofs of concept and introduction projects.

AREA member APX Labs recently announced the closing of an investment round with partners led by New Enterprise Associates. Other parties to the investment include GE Ventures, CNF Investments, Salesforce Ventures and SineWave Ventures.

According to a post on TechCrunch on the topic of the investment, GE is planning a large-scale deployment of the Skylight platform within a year. Skylight, APX Labs’ flagship product, runs on smart glasses such as Google Glass and Vuzix to control the display, camera, sensors and user inputs. Use cases include service and repairs to remote collaboration with experts.

The post also mentions that Salesforce, another APX Labs partner, sees smart glasses as a user interface for the Internet of Things, enabling visualization of key data and information in work environments.

Brian Ballard, CEO of APX Labs, expects the company to help enterprises improve workplace efficiencies across an expanding number of use cases.

To be clear, the profile of Jomi Holt published on the XOEye Technologies blog is not that of a daily Augmented Reality user. But it’s not terribly far.

Jomi Holt is an Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) technician at Lee Company. Lee Company has integrated wearable technology solutions from XOEye Technologies with their field service teams, making the use of remote experts a natural extension of the problem-solving process for their field technicians. Holt is one of the first to embrace and to use the technology on a daily basis. Technicians with less experience than Holt are able to contact him or one another with their XOEye software, using a Vuzix M-100’s camera to capture video, photographs and sounds or to transmit them in real time as part of a session.

Lee Company’s president, Richard Perko, has aspirations to put in a triage center using the XOEye system. From the center, experts will be able to spend their time mentoring and assisting a larger number of field technicians and improving customer outcomes.

Although not part of their stated plans, it will not be difficult for Lee or others to extend the capabilities and the scenarios described in this post to include Augmented Reality features.

Clinicians in medical practice are exploring new display and interaction techniques to streamline patient monitoring and care. Masimo, a leader in noninvasive monitoring technologies, provides Root, a patient monitoring and connectivity platform and the Iris gateway technology guarantees connectivity to other devices and services. Through Iris, Root provides integration with multiple standalone devices, such as IV pumps, ventilators, beds and other patient monitor systems.

At the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) annual conference in October 2015, Masimo and AREA member Atheer Labs demonstrated the Root Iris technology using the Atheer AiR (Augmented interactive Reality) platform and AiR Glasses.

Demonstrations permitted attendees to experience a prototype of display and touch-free interactions powered by the Atheer AiR Glasses. The companies used the opportunity to obtain feedback on features, usability and requirements from medical practitioners.

Evena Medical provides an AR-assisted point-of-care visualization system for performing medical procedures. Released in 2013, the first generation product for peripheral vein detection helps nurses visualize patient veins in real time to choose the best targets when performing venipuncture (inserting needles). Evena’s Eyes-On system was the first to deliver clear, anatomically accurate, real-time vascular imaging in a hands-free and cart-free system.

In a press release issued during the MEDICA 15 conference, Evena Medical launched its Eyes-On Glasses 3.0 platform. The new product features Evena’s DeepVu ultrasound as well as multispectral light technology utilizing a custom camera by Xacti, an OEM/ODM of digital still/video camera technologies. The platform now supports visualization of deep tissue vascular images such as the femoral vein and artery.

Augmented Reality capabilities are available on the new platform, enabling digital overlays during medical training or when performing certain procedures.

In the 16th Century, Nicolaus Copernicus published works that began a revolution to which Lewis Richards, a researcher at the Leading Edge Forum, an independent research arm of CSC, compares the current changes underway in enterprise IT. In his post on the Leading Edge Forum blog, Richards explains how wearables, sensors and Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies are following the first wave of change (the “consumerization” in enterprise) caused by Bring Your Own Device policies.

Richards goes on to suggest that the second wave of consumerization of the enterprise IT (the introduction of consumer-grade wearables, sensors and the suite of experiences they enable) will accelerate “co-creation opportunities and empowerment options” in the workplace.

Furthermore, the technologies and the new powers they offer will have disruptive effect on traditional service integrator relationships as employees become more adept at creating higher-order systems. The challenge, Richards says, is that those in enterprise IT will need to educate and shape how these new capabilities are best used in businesses. 

The AREA seeks to participate in that change underway and to support the development of new opportunities at the lowest risk levels.

If you want to read more about the Copernican change, visit this page on Wikipedia.

EM-Sense, a new technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research, was introduced at UIST 2015, the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology on November 8-11, in Charlotte, N.C. and information about it was published in a post on the CMU website.

The technology, which has been demonstrated using off-the-shelf consumer electronics components, takes advantage of the body’s natural electrical conductivity. In essence, the body serves as an antenna to detect whether a person is touching an electrical or electromechanical device and, based on the distinctive electromagnetic noise emitted by such devices, automatically identifies the object.

Kitchen appliances, power tools, electronic scales and door handles with electrically triggered locks are among the first items that the researchers have demonstrated can be detected and identified. Further training demonstrated that the sensitivity is sufficient to distinguish between different smartphone models. This technology could help users in an instrumented workplace receive instructions about the tools they touch and use.