Results indicated both expanding avenues for monetization and growing momentum for nearly every area of immersive technology’s use. With applications ranging from sports, video games, and entertainment to healthcare, education, and disaster preparedness, it is evident that immersive technology will create significant opportunities across industries.

“Industry leaders are noticing tangible and significant advances in the adoption of AR, VR and MR across sectors, such as healthcare, education, workforce training, manufacturing — including advanced manufacturing — and retail,” said Elizabeth Hyman, CEO of XRA. “During times of global economic uncertainty, feeling connected and maintaining efficiency and productivity are more important than ever. We are hopeful that the results of this survey demonstrate that the fundamentals are in place for a bright future of XR technology.”

Additional key findings include:

• Expectations for AR technologies continue to outpace VR in terms of expected revenue, market penetration, and consumer adoption, with three-fourths of respondents expecting the AR market to eventually surpass VR in total revenue.
• Six of the 10 top cities selected for their pioneering work in smart city immersive technologies are in the United States, including New York City, Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. Beijing, Tokyo, Dubai, and Barcelona round out the list.
• Respondents pointed to continued device upgrades as an improvement that will most impact consumer adoption of immersive technology in the next two years. Devices being smaller, fashionable, and comfortable followed.
• With AR devices in half of the world’s pockets via mobile phones, more than two-thirds of respondents expect that businesses will be investing slightly or significantly more in immersive technologies in 2020 compared to 2019. Just six percent expect the investment level to be lower than the previous year.
• More companies are proactively addressing and updating privacy policies and disclosures regarding consumer data. More than half (54 percent) of the respondents said they were doing so this year, compared with 47 percent in 2019.

These insights represent further progress toward XRA’s mission of promoting the thoughtful advancement of XR technology globally. The survey indicates strong tailwinds, with nearly 200 professionals representing, showing stronger optimism for the future of immersive technologies than ever before.

Get more information on the study.

Asia/Pacific* spending on AR/VR products and services will continue this strong growth throughout the forecast period (2018-23), with a five-year compound annual growth rate of 62.0%.

This growth is primarily driven by commercial industries which are going to be more than $11 billion larger than the consumer segment by the end of the forecast (2018-23). Despite this, the consumer segment (which is currently at $1.7 billion in 2019) continues to be larger than any other industry segment over the forecasted period.

The high growth in the commercial segment is primarily due to the AR/VR capability to solve complex business problems and streamline operations. The two industries that are seeing the most activities/implementation in Asia/Pacific* are education (US$ 495.3 million in 2019) and retail ($244.4 million in 2019), spending the most in this technology among other industries.

“Specialized training programs in the education system that includes VR pilot training through simulations, learning of human anatomy, etc. have given an opportunity to develop a specific skill set in the virtual environment. Leveraging this technology, the chances of making errors will not have fatal consequences during the training process. This has turned out to be a huge transition for institutes to save time for distance learning purposes and help in reducing cost due to the travel expenses incurred on students. Similarly, high-end retailers came across improvised customer engagement programs using this technology. This has also helped them in delivering the products based on customizing to a specific customer’s choice with the same or less time and effort. The technology has seen an increase in consideration and solutions around Online retail showcasing, retail showcasing, and virtual test drive,” says Ritika Srivastava, Associate Market Analyst at IDC India.

Despite the fact that the two industries have the highest market spend, there are other industries that have high potential to grow at a faster pace over the forecast period (2018-23) – with some of the new use cases in the pipeline. Retail (94.8% CAGR), followed by utilities, securities, investment services, and process manufacturing are the industries that are gaining momentum to explore the new use cases, and are lucrative in terms of investments. Use cases that dealt in operational tasks with the help of the Augmented Reality for performing tasks like assembly, maintenance, and repair have a lot of impetus within the industries.

The LiDAR Scanner measures the distance to surrounding objects up to five meters away, works both indoors and outdoors, operating at the photon level at nano-second speeds. 

Not only Apple has got LIDAR-Features, Google is also working on this. They are planning to offer LIDAR-like features, with and without the use of a depth camera.

Application types using depth cameras

ViewAR AR system that supports all kind of AR scenarios – from AR product visualization and indoor navigation to remote assistance and much more. They also developed various applications using depth cameras and reconstruction using external cameras like the Structure.io sensor.

Measuring (Surface & Volume computation)

Using a depth sensor allows you to create a 3D reconstruction of a room or objects. This can be used in order to compute measurements and volume like they did in a project for Lufthansa Cargo a video of which can be viewed here.

The LiDAR Scanner also improves the Measure app, making it faster and easier to automatically calculate someone’s height, while helpful vertical and edge guides automatically appear to let users more quickly and accurately measure objects. The Measure app also now comes with Ruler View for more granular measurements and allows users to save a list of all measurements, including screenshots for future use.

Flooring

A depth sensor is also highly relevant for industries in the field of flooring. It allows you to visualize different flooring materials in a room. Also it provides accurate measurements of the flooring area.

ViewAR is currently working on a solution for flooring. If you are interested in this solution, register at portal.viewar.com and request early access for the flooring template. 

Product Visualization – Occlusion

One of the main aspects in product visualization is that objects should look and behave like they were real, they should merge with the environment. The 3d reconstruction allows to…

Indoor Navigation

There is also a huge opportunity for 3d reconstructions in indoor navigation. Scanning 3d environments can help to determine your position and also add advanced occlusion effects while using the application.  The 3d scans can also be used for admin interfaces of indoor navigation. 

Using the ViewAR system and the LiDAR sensor

The idea of the ViewAR system is that users can very easily create AR applications using pre-defined templates or use the ViewAR JavaScript API to create custom applications. 

Read the original article here.

The ETSI GS ARF 003 introduces the characteristics of an AR system and describes the functional building blocks of a generic AR reference architecture and their mutual relationships. The global architecture gives an overview of an AR system which is based on a set of hardware and software components as well as data describing the real world and virtual content. The functional architecture applies to both fully embedded AR systems and implementations spread over IP networks in a scalable manner with subfunctions. These subfunctions can either be deployed on the AR device or be provided via cloud technology.

“In the context of the work undertaken by the group, Augmented Reality is the ability to mix in real-time spatially-registered digital content into the real world, thus augmenting the user’s reality with accurate contextual information” says Muriel Deschanel, Chair of the ETSI ISG ARF. “AR can be a real asset for many use cases in Industry 4.0 or in the medical sector. With the significant improvement to network performance brought by 5G, in particular in terms of bandwidth and latency, cloud services will become essential to a larger number of AR use cases”.

One of the applications of Augmented Reality for Industry 4.0 is to help face the unexpected peak of activity of a factory, in case of confinement or staff shortage. When a manufacturing plant needs to significantly increase its production, the Operation Director will hire temporary workers or shift operators from another line. This new staff may not have the expertise and/or the time to learn his job. Augmented Reality will therefore enable an experienced operator located in another area to train, guide and give precise instructions to the new operator while limiting physical contacts.

How The AREA contributed to the work

“Through our Interoperability and Standards program, the AREA contributed directly to the ETSI ISG ARF’s work on this specification. Members also carefully reviewed and provided substantive and editorial feedback. The final specification offers insights about how products and services can be combined to provide rich experiences to customers in many use cases. With this ETSI framework, companies can begin to focus on their true “core competencies” and trust that their products will be easier to integrate with third party products and services.”

Learn more

To know more about this architecture, the Chair of the group, Muriel Deschanel, and one of the technical and scientific leaders in the group, Jérôme Royan,  will give you an “Overview of ETSI reference architecture for Augmented Reality solutions” in a free live webinar on 28 April 2020 at 4:00 pm CEST.  Register here

According to PTC, there are five common use cases for AR/VR in field service: identifying parts that need replacement, viewing technical information, remote customer service, employee training, and following complex maintenance procedures. Companies that help employees perform tasks more safely and quickly using up-to-date information delivered to their visor or headset will be rewarded with greater job commitment and motivation.

Another function is sales and marketing. VR and AR can dramatically improve or disrupt outdated processes and engagement models to demonstrate a brand’s unique value proposition. Companies utilizing virtual product models are finding real competitive advantage.

“Interactive applications engage prospects earlier, train sales/channel teams faster, shorten sales cycles, reduce product shipping costs and increases win rates,” said Dana Drissel, vice president of marketing at Kaon Interactive, provider of B2B sales and marketing applications. “Companies need to embrace and adopt new ways of working with the latest emerging technologies if they want to truly differentiate and stay competitive.”

One area with high ROI from virtual sales and marketing is savings in product shipping costs. Large, complex products cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to ship to and from sales meetings and tradeshows. 

Commercial and industrial printing firm, Ricoh USA, Inc., has a strong brand, product, message and customer service ethos. However, it was seeking an innovative, efficient and effective way to convey that strength to its customers and prospects virtually.

Ricoh’s portfolio of production presses and platforms are high-powered, technological innovations that offer high levels of customization and complementing software services that can cost up to $2 million at the highest end of its spectrum. For such a significant investment, potential customers want an in-depth examination of the products. Customers want to see them, watch how they work, and explore the features and benefits.

To ship Ricoh presses to demo sites around the world cost over $150,000 per printer, per event. With between six to 10 tradeshows in a typical year, the marketing team started asking themselves what alternatives could they offer their customers that delivered a similar experience, yet without the physical equipment.

The solution? A virtual product tour that is also available in augmented reality. Having an interactive, photo-realistic, 3-D-animated, virtual tour and AR experience of the printing press suddenly made it possible to demonstrate the capabilities and show the value in sales meetings on the sales rep’s tablet or laptop.

“To me, the application is just a virtual extension of our product,” said Mike Herold, Ricoh’s director of inkjet solutions. “Of course, it doesn’t take the place of visiting one of our Customer Experience Centers, but it’s a good interim step in the sales cycle.”

The Onsight platform allows workers to collaborate securely across multiple industries including aviation, defense, manufacturing, energy and inspection. The system also works in challenging areas where bandwidth and network connectivity are limited, such as a basement over cellular or an offshore oil rig over satellite.

The AR system can be used for remote inspections of equipment, diagnostic assessments and telemedicine consults. With travel restrictions and shelter in place becoming the norm, in-person meetings are not feasible anymore, so the AR platform allows workers at home to communicate with those in the field using both visual and audio aids.

The software runs on smartphones, tablets, smart glasses, wearables and computers.

The Coronavirus outbreak will cause manufacturing delays at the source and reduce the overall demand for Augmented Reality (AR) Smart glasses. At the same time, there will be a significant increase in demand on both the enterprise and consumer side as telepresence and content demand grows. The balance between these two will see 16 million AR & Virtual Reality (VR) head mounted display (HMD) shipments in 2021, maintaining the trajectory of the 3.5 million consumer AR shipments in 2024, states global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research.

“The coronavirus outbreak will cause temporary manufacturing and shipment delays, however the demand for consumer AR and VR devices and content has been increased due to home isolation, balancing initial drop in demand and financial losses for providers,” says Eleftheria Kouri, Research Analyst at ABI Research.

COVID-19 has affected most CE companies, especially in mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea. “As anticipated, COVID-19 has impacted the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) market as well, causing temporary delays in AR/VR device production, increased costs, and revenue losses,” says Kouri. MAD Gaze, a Hong Kong based consumer AR smart glasses provider, has announced delays in shipments, and changed its display panel supplier from a Chinese factory to Korean and Japanese factories due to production delays in Chinese factories. Nreal, a China-based AR consumer smart glasses provider, announced production/ shipment delays as well. At the same time, bigger companies with higher demand and larger-scale supply chains face similar issues, such as Oculus, HTC, and Vive struggling to meet VR headset demand.

“In the short term, the delays in production and scheduled shipments, and potential decrease in demand will have a huge financial impact on AR/VR device manufacturers, generating reduced revenue and unexpected extra costs for employee salaries or for alternative suppliers. Also, delays and reduced funding series are expected, mainly affecting startups,” Kouri explains. Finally, delays are anticipated in AR/VR application development and upcoming upgrades due to the cancellation of developer conferences (Apple, Google, Facebook).

Long-term production and shipment delays will mainly affect smaller companies, especially those launching devices for first time in the market (like Nreal or small VR companies). Delays may encourage potential customers to purchase products from competitors and bigger companies that are supported by high-scale supply chains and product stocks. Moreover, continuous delays of product delivery will negatively affect user experience (even if the delays are caused by unexpected reasons). “The impact will be more significant on new companies/startups aiming to get established in the market and build a reliable brand name. Delays will also push roadmaps into the future and depending on how significant a reduction is in demand and manufacturing capabilities, some may be unable to last,” Kouri points out.

The AR consumer market and smart glasses manufacturers are at a relatively lower risk in terms of losing potential customers and may not notice significantly reduced pre-orders/shipments, because AR consumer devices are not a high demand product at the current stage of the market, and the competition is still weak (consumers do not have range of options as in the VR or AR enterprise sector). “However, both AR and VR solutions can contribute to addressing challenges. AR/VR can be a useful tool to support/supplement online education courses (in regions where schools/universities are closed and rely on online learning (e.g., some schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)). Also, AR remote assistance applications or AR/VR training can be a valuable solution to avoid unnecessary travel, and hardware choice is less impactful on these use cases,” recommends Kouri.

Press release source.

We are all facing unprecedented challenges in our lives and at work due to the impact of Covid-19. With much of the world being asked to shelter in place, we’re all looking for ways to reinvent how we get the work done to serve our customers, our companies, and all the people who work for them. It’s becoming clear that we will all be increasingly reliant on the tools and technology that keeps businesses connected to its customers and stakeholders. Now more than ever, we’re all in this together, and communication is vital.

As we find new ways to stay connected, I am very optimistic enterprises will find ways to speed innovation and rethink business-as-usual. At Scope AR, we’re committed to helping our customers leverage AR where possible as a tool for keeping essential operations moving forward. Over the past six weeks, we’ve seen that take on many forms such as virtual workforce training, remote expert assistance being used to guide factory equipment repairs and maintenance procedures, as well as the use of intuitive AR work instructions to help manufacturers stick to production timelines as best as possible.  

We will continue to spotlight successful AR deployments and share lessons learned and best practices so that other enterprises have real-world examples of how augmented reality can be used to solve complex business challenges. I recently had a great discussion with Walter Davis at Aggreko. Walter was kind enough to share three takeaways from an AR remote employee training project now underway. 

Aggreko brings power, energy storage, heating & cooling to sites around the world. Their generators help power emergency services, hospitals, and other major events.  Aggreko’s products ensure that manufacturers and construction sites can keep production on track and maintain efficiency. They also work with the utility industry to ensure power keeps flowing to their customers. 

With more than 200 locations of its own worldwide, Aggreko can deploy its equipment to any part of the globe. In their over 50 years in business, they’ve powered everything from massive hurricane recovery sites to global mega-events like the 2012 Olympics in London and FIFA World Cup events.

As the Head of Talent and Learning Technology at Aggreko, Walter is always looking for new ways to build expertise across the company’s workforce deploying Aggreko products — wherever and whenever their customers need them. Given the current limitations to travel, the need for delivering digital training knowledge has gone from a “nice to have” to ‘mission critical’ from an operational standpoint. He’s been a champion at the company for the use of AR to train employees on its 1600 CFM diesel compressor – a massive piece of equipment that weighs 12 tons and is 20 feet long.

Aggreko built an AR training program using the Scope AR WorkLink platform to create a virtual, full-sized model of the compressor. “They can do a full walk-around,” Walter said, noting the experience is an “immersive training on a life-sized, full-scale model of our product.” Employees can get familiar with controls, key features, and components. 

The AR experience also shows how to turn on or decommission the equipment, as well as how to conduct essential maintenance procedures like changing out fuel and oil filters. To deliver the AR experience, they’re using devices their workforce already carries – like smart phones and tablets – so no additional hardware investment is needed. This means training is now available wherever their workers are.  As an added bonus, physical equipment doesn’t have to be taken away from a job site, which is a huge cost savings for Aggreko.

Here are three takeaways Walter said he learned from this initial AR deployment that might resonate with other businesses considering AR as a reliable and scalable way to train and share expert knowledge amongst their workforce:

1. AR reinvents and optimizes an essential process. To train its workers on the 1600 compressor, Aggreko used to fly them to training centers all over the globe to get face-to-face and hands-on training with the equipment. This model is costly and inefficient. AR can bring distance learning to the workforce, not the other way around.
   
2. AR helps unlock tangible ROI. To train in-person, Aggreko has to ship its massive compressors to training centers. In addition to considerable shipping costs, they can’t use that equipment out on a customer site. Walter estimates that they would be saving $500K if AR was used in place of physical products for all current technical programs.

3. Companies can help speed innovation across their business. Walter notes that while the plan was always to scale from the 1600 compressor experience to create training experiences for other pieces of Aggreko equipment, the challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic have definitely accelerated this process. As the company has currently banned all non business-critical in person training and business travel, they are quickly building processes and creating content to distribute worldwide so that employees can continue to receive the training and knowledge they need to deliver an optimal experience to their customers. 

Uncertain times like these spur innovation in using new technologies and how we do our work to keep things moving forward. Just as Aggreko is transforming its workforce training, we undoubtedly will see other businesses figuring out new ways to leverage technology to help navigate these volatile times.

Learn more about Aggreko and the work they’re doing to power business across the globe.

Read Scope AR’s AREA member profile.

Link to original article.

Remote work has been positioned as an answer to several global issues, including economic inequality and even climate change (a climate-friendly alternative to daily commuting).

Author Emily Friedman shares her thoughts, statistics, use cases and more that she found whilst researching the topic pre-COVID19.

In the article she talks through the specific types of remote work – particularly the future of AR/VR-enabled remote work, which was perhaps one of the earliest recognized use cases for enterprise AR

There are many​ ​terms for this – remote assistance, remote guidance, remote collaboration – but it’s essentially telepresence, using the front-facing camera and microphone in a pair of smart (AR) glasses to share one’s view of a situation with a remotely-located expert, colleague or customer via live audio and point-of-view video.

​​
Many of those early remote support cases revolved around enhancing service efficiency​ ​in the field, where technicians spend their days responding to issues as they arise. With a global shortage of skilled technicians, AR-enhanced remote support or see-what-I-see has allowed less experienced employees to show issues to remotely located veteran techs in real time. This allows remote over-the-shoulder coaching, and has helped increase first-time fix rates, reduce travel costs, decrease downtime, and train new technicians on the job without jeopardizing customer satisfaction.

The ability to share your view and collaborate in a virtual space with people in different locations will transform how many of us work. It’s not just about saving time and money, cutting down on travel, providing better customer service, or remaining productive when practicing social distancing.

Remote working via AR/VR, from collaborating on a design in mixed reality to business meetings in virtual reality, might be the answer to a number of employment issues, including stagnating wages, the rising​ ​cost of living, and the child-care crisis.

The ability to be ‘present’ anywhere will also help us address some of the biggest social issues of our day—like ballooning housing costs and inequality of opportunity by geography.

Today, many people feel like they have to move to cities because that’s where the jobs are. But there isn’t enough housing in many cities, so housing costs are skyrocketing while quality of living is decreasing. Imagine if you could live anywhere you choose and access any job anywhere else.

Women, especially working moms, would greatly benefit from the kind of XR-enabled remote working that Zuckerberg predicts. Friedman explains various issues such as gender pay gap around this, care giving responsibilities, unemployment and other social issues.

In an economy (and society) that devalues care-giving, women do paid labor and a disproportionate amount of unpaid labor within the home. Though not viewed as economic output, this unpaid labor is essential to the overall functioning of the economy.

New realities, however, could break down traditional work requirements and help create a more equal reality by allowing women to work flexibly and hold down good​ ​jobs from home. In an ideal world, remote work technologies would allow women to work for any company in the world from any city in the world.

Employers would benefit, too: Not only are women incredibly valuable to the economy (if every woman in America stopped working for a day, it would cost the GDP over $20 billion) but flexible work arrangements make a company more competitive at a time when skilled labor is in​ ​high demand.

Bill Gates predicted that “companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge.”

Now, a global pandemic is showing that the technology isn’t really there for office workers and that AR and VR for more everyday work tasks has been largely overlooked.​

Read the article in full.

Read BrainXChange’s AREA member profile

Technavio has been monitoring the augmented reality (AR) and it is poised to grow by USD 76.99 billion during 2020-2024. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. 

The market is concentrated, and the degree of concentration will during the forecast period. Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Upskill, Vuzix Corp. and Zugara Inc. are some of the major market participants. The adoption of AR-enabled smart glasses will offer immense growth opportunities. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Adoption of AR-enabled smart glasses has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Learn more out the segmentation and scope of this report including sections and analysis on Business Wire.

You may download a free sample from Technavio