Peritus.ai is a tech startup which until now has been in “stealth mode”, but is now developing ways of utilising artificial intelligence to increase efficiency of data centre management.  They have received $2 million funding from venture capital firm Ideaspring Capital and The Hive, which will be used to expand and fortify their presence in India.

Ideaspring Capital is based in Bengaluru and was founded in 2016 by Naganand Doraswamy to invest in home-grown product startups. The fund has participated in seed rounds in Zapty providing enterprise software for collaborating on project management and task management; in Whodat, an augmented reality platform for developers to create inclusive AR experiences with markerless technology; in Lavelle Networks working on cloud computing and enterprise software.

Peritus is developing AI solutions for the enterprise. Data centres serve as the basis for delivering modern enterprise IT services such as the cloud. IoT Cloud Operators and Service Providers have to provide high availability and resilience, avoid downtime and accommodate fast-changing technology landscape and greater infrastructure complexity.

The startup further says that proof of concept is clear in how one of their early adopter customers was able to reduce their support burden by 65.7 percent while handling 37 percent more support requests.

The article explains how Peritus is applying AI and machine learning to infrastructure management for enterprise benefits and the business’ aims.  They have provable success stories as one of Peritus’ early adopter customers were able to reduce their support burden by 65.7% and handle 37% more support requests.

Full article on BWDisrupt.

The leading distributor of medical supplies, Medtree, has listed tech trends in medicine, and what they could lead to in future:

• Drones – their delivery of medical supplies is saving lives in countries with lack of roads, medicine, and poor access to hospitals. Zipline, pioneer of the first national drone delivery network in Rwanda, has made almost 1000 drops of blood in life-or-death situations.
• Augmented Reality – Touch Surgery, one of the latest pioneers of the AR trend, are developing Go Surgery, which provides medical experts with step-by-step guides to certain surgery procedures, projected holographically onto a screen. It can be used to train medics on detailed aspects of surgery.
• Clinical Skills App – designed by Medtree, this free programme allows clinicians to record skills and clinical interventions. The app enables easy documentation of airway interventions, wound management, drug administration, etc.
• MelaFind – this is a non-invasive device that uses light to evaluate skin lesions up to 2.55m below the skin, and was a pioneer for this type of research. The QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute conducted the world’s largest skin cancer study in order to create a highly accurate online test to predict your likelihood of developing the disease, made available earlier this month.
• Partnerships – Google partnered with Calico (a unit made to tackle the challenge of ageing and disease associated with this) in 2013. Two years later, the organisations merged to try ‘stop’ the ageing process; an experimental drug compound, P7C3, has been developed as a result, with the potential to be used to treat Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
• 3D Printing – this market is expected to expand by 17.5% between 2017 and 2025, being mainly driven by industry including healthcare. The technology can be used for implants, instrumentation, and external prostheses. Tissue engineering is currently under development, therefore is the newest practice for 3D printing.
• Virtual Reality Games – the first platform for healthcare is AppliedVR, which offers patients an escape from chronic pain stress and surgical recovery. Guided Relaxation, the first product created by Cedars-Sini Medical Centre’s partnership with medical academics and psychologists, allows patients to relax with mindfulness exercises.
• Healthcare Robots – P&S Market Research have predicted that the global personal robot market will reach $34.1 billion by 2022. An in-home healthcare robot has been developed by Pillo Health and Orbita, which combines AI and voice technology, for hope of release in Q4 of this year to reduce inefficiencies in healthcare.
• Digital Stethoscopes – these offer features such as audio recording and sound amplification to improve accuracy of diagnosis. Eko Devices have produces the DUO, a combined electronic stethoscope and EKG that allows insights into cardiac function by working in conjunction with the mobile app.

The dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses, using AiR Enterprise, provide a solution for industrial applications, such as:

• Field service
• Dealer service
• Manufacturing and repair operations
• Assembly line management
• Technician and expert training
• Warehouse picking
• Asset inspection and repair
• Remote visualization and support

The AiR Enterprise AR solution will be available on Toshiba dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses in Q2 of 2018. The integrated suite of capabilities includes:

• User point of view photo and video capture using embedded camera
• Configurable step-by-step task guidance with gesture-based interactions
• See-What-I-See video conferencing via remote communications
• Detailed task and workflow process analytics
• Enterprise grade security (on-device, in-transit, at-rest)
• Easy integration with other enterprise systems
• Barcode scanning and info display

Soulaiman Itani, co-founder and CEO of Atheer, is quoted to have said that the company believes their partnership with Toshiba will be beneficial for enterprises that require a Windows 10-based enterprise AR solution. Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing and engineering at Client Solutions Division, Toshiba, is also quoted to have said that their partnership with Atheer enables them to provide an enterprise-ready, AR solution, and that Atheer have proved their experience and tech leadership within the sector.

The dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses integrates Toshiba’s dynaEdge AR100 Head Mounted Display with its dynaEdge DE-100 Mobile Mini PC to make way for a wearable system that optimises productivity, security, and mobility. Its implementation with AiR Enterprise is the first time it has been offered on Windows 10.

The article claims that successful designs must incorporate a sense of fashion in addition to ergonomic understanding. Ari Grobman, CEO of Israeli see-through smart glasses display developer Lumus, is quoted to have said that major tech companies working on AR glasses should focus on reducing resistance to adoption. The difficulty lies with getting the balance right between functionality and “cool” design.

The “best” AR headsets need to consist of bulky hardware in order to provide a wide field of view and optimise resolution, according to the article. Slimmer displays (e.g. Google Glass) are more comfortable to wear but are less functional due to their position not being parallel to the user’s field of vision. Additional features, such as a decent camera and microphone, make it all the more difficult to increase comfort and style.

Nima Shams, VP of Headworn at Osterhout Design Group, is quoted to have said that their company aims to “design the next mobile computing platform”, and that smart glasses need to have every feature that smartphones do in order to become as essential. ODG have designed smart glasses for industrial use previously; Shams has said that customers working in the industry are more apathetic about the design of the product. Shams is also quoted to have said that advanced, high-tech smart glasses need to blend into fashionable devices to achieve mass adoption.

Intel launched their Vaunt Glasses in February this year; in creating these, Intel sacrificed a microphone, speaker, and camera in addition to other hardware to make way for a sleeker, more lightweight design. Francois Nguyen, industrial designer and creative director at design firm Frog, is quoted to have said that people are inclined to compromise better functionality for a more attractive-looking product.

The glasses are equipped with built-in cameras and paired with a handheld device to match facial biometrics of suspects to wanted criminals and persons of interest in police databases.

Currently, the smart glasses are being used outside of Beijing at a highway checkpoint to identify license plate numbers as well as individuals within vehicles. Again, the system is designed to flag cars within police databases, allowing the technology to be used as a criminal dragnet.

Biometric technology is becoming more prominent in China, particularly facial recognition systems. Many applications are for surveillance purposes, which is controversial amongst civil rights advocates due to increased government power, also evident in the recent abolition of term limits for President. However, the biometric smart glasses are undoubtedly a powerful new law enforcement tool for police authorities.

Judges will look for:

• An outline of the device, solution, service or project and its role within the AR/VR industry.
• Specific characteristics which make the device, solution, service or project successful/unique
• A demonstration of the benefit of the device, solution, service or project to its intended audience, with case study examples where appropriate
• An explanation of the KPIs by which success has or will be measuredIf you think you think your product has what it takes to win The AR & VR Futureproof Award, submit your entry before the 16th April.

Designed for enterprise customers, Toshiba’s new dynaEdgeTM AR Smart Glasses packages together the company’s new dynaEdge AR100 Head Mounted Display (HMD) with its dynaEdge DE-100 Mobile Mini PC for a completely wearable PC system maximizing mobility, productivity and security without compromising flexibility.

Russian IT startups are working extensively in the area of Augmented Reality, but although interest in the technology is growing in major sectors of the economy, there is still a long way to go before it is adopted on a wide scale.

Sectors such as defence, railways and automotive have shown interest in AR, but it is by no means a done deal for most organisations.

“It is no longer hype, but real interest,” said Sergey Polinenko, General DIrector Itorum, a company resident at the innovation hub Skolkovo outside Moscow.

However, Russian companies working in AR still face various challenges, especially when it comes to actually selling the technology to customers.

There is a large gap between companies expressing an interest and actually placing an order, said Polinenko. “Most enterprises in Russia are not prepared to take a risk – they wait until a solution becomes adopted in the West,” he said.

Itorum’s main product is AR glasses, which are used in quality control and servicing equipment at industrial enterprises. Technicians wearing AR glasses can take advantage of remote consultations with experts located elsewhere in the world, whose advice and suggestions can be seen on the glasses.

Itorum also provides services using AR glasses for training and education and to help industrial personnel control operations.

Meanwhile, Fibrum, another Russian startup that specialises in AR applications, is gaining customers in the exhibitions sector.  Nikita Vyugin, Marketing Director at Fibrum, said the biggest difficulty is often customers’ insufficient understanding of the difference between VR AR and mixed reality.

“Although AR and VR solutions are relatively widespread, the industry is still quite young and, although promising, many people still see it as a curiosity,” he said.

More can be read in the full Computer Weekly article.

From BrainXChange: “Determining ROI a key challenge faced by enterprises today in the still-early days of the technology, for it’s not always a simple matter of numbers and percentages.  At BrainXChange’s EWTS events, real end users shared first-hand experiences of and outside-the-box thinking about gauging the ROI of wearables in your business.

When we talk about ROI, we usually talk in terms of concrete numbers. But what we heard from a number of enterprise users is that it’s often not easy to pin down numbers with wearable technology; sometimes it’s more practical – even necessary – to qualify than to quantify the success of these devices in your organization.

Peter Godino, Hershey Company: “There is always an ROI when you’re improving the way you do something [but] there are some things I don’t like to put KPIs to. I know there’s an enhancement. Sometimes it’s improving the quality of life for your engineering team or the people on the floor. A lot of metrics cannot be expressed as a dollar return, but we’ve seen a lot of benefits from wearable technology. Line uptime will be one of the big outcomes, though we cannot claim to have seen a reduction in downtime at this time; but we’re pretty sure we’ll have that information in the future.”

While you might view that as sort of a gamble – banking on the hope that one day there will be numerical data to support the adoption of wearables in enterprise – improving employees’ quality of life is no minor benefit:

Kristi Montgomery, Kenco Logistics: “Improving the quality of life for those end users (warehouse workers) is hard to quantify from a dollar perspective…Employee satisfaction and engagement–if we can improve that [then] we feel like we’ve accomplished something even if there’s no hard dollar amount we can account for.”

Peter also spoke to the idea that sometimes you just know there’s an enhancement:

Dawn Bridges, Jacobs Engineering: “A wearable that recognizes a barcode is an efficiency.” Replacing hand-held barcode scanners with something wearable that frees up workers’ hands is a clear efficiency, supported by sheer logic if not by a percentage.

George Bowser of DHL gave two sides to the ROI coin: There’s measuring the impact of wearables on productivity and accuracy; and then there are less calculable, even emotional, indicators like ergonomics, impact on workers themselves, and user acceptance. And sometimes it might be necessary to weigh some metrics against others: If it’s not possible to (accurately) calculate an increase in productivity over the short lifespan of a pilot program; talking with users – even handing out questionnaires as DHL does – might reveal other, more immediately observable improvements such as less physical strain or awkwardness for workers using smart glasses to scan items instead of a handheld scanner.”

Other case studies and quotes from the full article can be read here.

A report released by ABI Research shows that the AR market is still undergoing significant expansion into new areas in consumer and enterprise sectors.

ABI Research is predicting that binocular device types such as smartglasses will undergo continued increases in demand, especially with regards to manufacturing and enterprise applications from companies such as Vuzix and Avegant.

The report forecasts that there will be 32.7 million total smart glasses shipments in 2022, growing from 225 thousand in 2017. The development of the technology to provide smaller and more lightweight form-factor smartglasses, with higher resolution displays will drive continued demand.

“The past few years have allowed augmented reality to take root in the enterprise with compelling and unique use cases, including remote expertise and hands-free instruction,” says Eric Abbruzzese, Principal Analyst for ABI Research. “As the market matures, there will be a need for greater capability in these AR devices, with displays powering much of the change. Given the growing consumer market interest, the similarities and differences between display types in AR will be increasingly important.”

“As the AR demand grows in enterprise and begins in the consumer market, the requirements for smart glasses shift,” continues Abbruzzese. “Generally, an increased desire for higher-performing devices will push the market toward better displays in every category, with some use cases targeting specific needs. Consumer fitness devices will require small form factors and high brightness suitable for outdoor usage. AR media and entertainment growth with necessitate binocular, 3D capable devices with high resolution. Devices used in environments with high safety requirements will favor safety certified devices with highly transparent displays. Across the board, as knowledge and comfort with the potential of AR grow, so does the expectation for the devices, and with that expectation the requirements for devices grow too.”