In January, DHL announced results of a trial in the Netherlands showing that picker performance could increased by 25% with the support of hands-free displays and Augmented Reality. This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the DHL will continue its smart glasses trials in other facilities in order to study benefits to customers.
Engineers in the the Electrical Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a prototype of their K-Glass reference design, reports Phys.org. Using proprietary technology integrated into the frame, the K-Glass 2 detects users’ eye movements to point the cursor to recognize computer icons or objects in the Internet, and uses winks and blinks for commands. The researchers call this interface the “i-Mouse.” Although the concept has been around in research for over a decade, the gaze-image sensor (GIS) and object recognition processor (ORP) are now built into second generation silicon designs. Compared to earlier ORP systems, the new chip uses 3.4 times less power, permitting nearly 24 hours of optical see-through Augmented Reality on a single charge.
Fujitsu has been developing hardware and software for enterprise Augmented Reality for several years. They provide hardware as well as a cloud based content management system, the Software Interstage Processing Server. In this blog post on A New Domain, Ant Pruitt offers his impressions of the Fujitsu automotive repair use case shown to thousands of visitors each day at Mobile World Congress 2015. The demonstration is convincing and the technology promising.
SOF S.p.A., a subsidiary of Inso Sistemi per le Infrastrutture sociali, focusing on facilities management, plant management energy and the design and installation of new heating, air conditioning and electrical systems in Italian construction projects, has been testing the use of Augmented Reality in its plant maintenance systems as part of an integrated reference model. In these slides the director of engineering, Alexandr Vannas, sheds light on the vision, the results to date and their future plans.
NASA’s announcement that it is working on Augmented Reality for ground applications caught a lot of media attention. This interview on Bloomberg TV is with ODG’s Pete Jameson discusses use cases. In this article on VentureBeat, the author describes a new relationship between NASA and Osterhout Design Group. The partnership will focus on development of Augmented Reality services to be delivered on ODG’s smart glasses for supporting field service activities. Over time there could be use cases for astronauts on the International Space Station and Orion spacecraft. The partners anticipate that astronauts will have higher performance with AR-assisted manuals as well as remote assistance from personnel on the Earth when the tasks are undocumented or unusual.
An event in London created an opportunity for Augmented Reality to meet with customers and media. CNBC covered the event with a short video and article. During a panel dedicated to the topic of enterprise Augmented Reality, Jay Kim, CTO of AREA member APX Labs, describes how some of the obstacles to enterprise AR integration are being studied and that progress is being made to address techincal barriers. As described in the article on ITPro web site, the panelists feel that enterprise AR is beginning to show impacts in trials conducted in large organizations to which Accenture is providing services and support. Non-technical obstacles such as employees’s resistance to change and corporate policies are also going to need to be addressed in order for AR to fulfill its potential.
Those who visit the AREA portal are discovering the benefits of Augmented Reality in the workplace on a daily basis. They aren’t the only ones. This article on PCR on-line describes how attendees of this year’s Wearable Technology Show could also learn how Augmented Reality will take hold in enterprise. Panelists including Jim Kay, CTO of AREA member APX Labs, and Charlie Issacs, CTO of Salesforce, described the impacts that Augmented Reality can deliver through improved efficiencies of workers.
ABB has been innovating with new technology for the plant floor for decades. In a showcase of future technologies, described in this article in Robotics Tomorrow, the company is showing how Augmented Reality can assist shop floor commissioning people to perform their tasks more efficiently. Virtual reality and remote service are also part of the company’s big box of tricks being introduced to customers at the company’s ABB Automate 2015 event to improve factory performance.
Inglobe Technologies is a mature technology provider with experience providing AR for retail, industrial, education, architecture and cultural heritage use cases. It is launching a new platform: Hyperspaces. Hyperspace is a web interface and cloud infrastructure designed for AR authoring, publishing and delivery platform. For more information about the company and its offerings, visit Inglobe’s web site.
According to a press release released by Vidyo, a provider of video compression and conferencing software and technologies to many vendors, the company is introducing VidyoWorks, new mobile client APIs designed to deliver video collaboration features to smart glasses. Smart glasses maker Vuzix will be the first company to license the VidyoWorks scalable video coding (SVC) technology on its M100 smart glasses, which enable developers to incorporate video communication and collaboration. Video interactions using VidyoWorks can also be recorded and stored as evidence that a job was performed correctly using VidyoReplay.