At the company’s Belfast facilities, that innovation has been very much in evidence over the last several years as Thales has built on the strong foundation of its experience in advanced weapons systems (including lightweight, precision strike multirole missiles)

Thales’s UK Land & Air Systems Country Business Unit (CBU) addresses the needs of land, naval and air forces involved in conventional and asymmetric operations, including mounted and dismounted close combat, patrols, reconnaissance and counter-IED – to be their customers’ choice for mission critical information, services and products that protect, defend & save lives.

Thales Moves into Services

It is against the background of this kind of innovation that Belfast-based Thales Service Innovation Lead David Oliveira approached a new opportunity for his team. He said that although the company is well-known for the precision equipment it produces, Thales is also seeing rising revenues from its services business, and that’s where he saw an opening for further innovation.

“Our ambition to increase our services business revenue, partly relies on a digital transformation.” he explained. “Using Digital technologies to break down barriers between Industry – Customer – User whilst delivering our services at the heart of our customer’s operation, providing great user experience is key to success.”

One of the innovations that David’s team decided to focus on was remote assistance, resulting in Thales deciding to explore Augmented Reality (AR) to better support customers and Thales employees in the field. One of the first use case that arose in this exploration was finding better ways to support remote customers in South East Asia, being able to be reactive and avoid incurring the time and expense of flying a Field Service Engineer in from Belfast.

“We wanted to understand how we could deliver the expertise our customers require in an efficient way,” said David Oliveira. “We knew we wanted to look at remote assistance tools – so we started on the business case selecting a test use case, mapping our customer’s journey for technical support. This confirmed the validity of the use case and started a pilot phase.”

To explore AR, Thales selected the Atheer AR Management Platform and the RealWear HMT-1 to provide “see what I see” video calling, hands-free work and the capability to offer digital delivery of work instructions in a user’s field of vision.

He said the investment has already paid for itself in the travel costs saved. He gave as an example a case where Thales had some equipment requiring technical support in a remote location – and the work was complex enough that Thales would typically have had to fly someone out to understand and fix the issue.

Instead, using the Atheer platform, a member of the Thales team onsite was able to make a video call from their RealWear HMT-1 to a Thales expert in Belfast, who was able to provide the necessary support within 45 minutes. “Straight away, we had return on investment,” said David Oliveira.

Thales is now working to expand the way in which it uses the Atheer platform by creating work instructions to cover a number of the most common service issues team members face in the field as well as moving the remote assistance from pilot phase to production.

Read Atheer’s member profile 

The technology, along with virtual reality, also has great potential to train new mechanics, as demonstrated at the Dubai air show, where AFI KLM E&M has revealed its HoloLens mixed reality glasses.

Developed with the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre via a joint venture called Nuveon, HoloLens can superimpose a virtual environment over the real one, allowing complex systems and components to be recreated as a hologram in the wearer’s vision.

The technology has been trialed – and Part 145 EASA certified – with Gulf Air to train engineers on the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000, but AFI KLM E&M says that modules for other engines and systems are available.

Speaking to Inside MRO earlier this year, Gerrit Rexhausen, program manager of corporate innovation at Lufthansa Technik, was also impressed by the potential of AR technologies.

“AR technology offers great advantages in the preparation and display of data, especially in the maintenance area of ​​a hangar. We increasingly want to replace the fixed workstations in the hangars and aggregate the required IT systems on a mobile device,” he said.

Back at Gulf Air, chief executive Kresimir Kucko, said that “the participants in the training module were quickly won over by the simplicity and modernity of the solution.“

Notable here is the emphasis on simplicity, for while virtual reality training solutions are potentially more immersive, few virtual reality (VR) goggles offer the “complete freedom of movement“ the AFI KLM E&M promises from HoloLens.

Another disadvantage of VR is that it is a completely virtual environemnt, rather than a synthersis of real and holographic, although no doubt its immersive qualities will prove ideal for certain other types of training.

The ability of AR to blend the experience of the real world with all the power of digital information is impressive. Although AR had become popular only a few years ago, healthcare organizations have been incorporating it for several years. Combining the use of augmented reality for patient care in the healthcare industry has undoubtedly proven to be a blessing for doctors and patients. Medical history of a patient can travel with him from birth to death and can be easily accessed by doctors with the help of AR technology.

By providing real-time data and patient information faster, AR gives surgeons and doctors the ability to diagnose, treat, and perform surgery on their patients more precisely than ever before. The use of augmented reality in the healthcare market is expected to increase rapidly. An estimate shows that the revenue of augmented reality in the healthcare market can grow up to USD 1.32 billion by the year 2023 at a CAGR of 23%. That’s because there are many examples where the healthcare industry is using AR for the benefit of the patient.

The article talks through details of the 7 patient care applications of AR in healthcare

1. Advanced diagnostics
2. Surgery assistance
3. Patient assistance
4. Vein vizualisation
5. Ultrasound scanning
6. Patient aftercare
7. Patient selfcare

Background on guest speaker Yan Simard, CEO of Kognitiv Spark. He’s designed and led many innovative business ventures through his own startups. He also has extensive professional experience with companies such as CGI, Zaptap, Vision Coaching, AIS, Incite Wellness, Bell Canada, Industrial Alliance, and more.

Simard said “We believe that mixed and augmented reality, if used right, can not only allow frontline and field workers to stay relevant, but make them more crucial than ever before.”

A transcript of the 32 minute video can be read on Kognitiv Spark’s blog along with the XR for Business Podcast recording itself which you can listen to.

Now, it seems we are hitting a technology tipping point in that suppliers of product design, industrial control, cloud, and simulation applications, are uniting to bring their products together. It’s an effort aimed at accelerating their customers’ digital adoption by simplifying technology deployments and delivering measurable results.

As an example, Rockwell Automation recently introduced a Digital Partner Program that extends its reach outside of the automation domain and into new areas of expertise. Last year, Rockwell announced a partnership with PTC. The deal included a $1 billion equity investment from Rockwell and an alignment of products that resulted in the FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, an integration of Rockwell’s analytics and manufacturing operations management (MOM) platforms with PTC’s ThingWorx IoT platform, which includes industrial connectivity from Kepware and Vuforia augmented reality (AR).

This month at Rockwell Automation Fair, the company unveiled another strategic partnership with Ansys, a provider of simulation software, that builds upon the PTC play. That’s because, last year, PTC also announced a partnership with Ansys to provide real-time simulation within PTC’s Creo 3D CAD software as a way to unify modeling and simulation environments.

A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical product or process. In manufacturing, a digital twin can be a dynamic virtual representation of an entire plant, or it can be focused on a single asset, like a machine. By tying together a simulated 3D design with a control architecture, manufactures can avoid spending time and money developing a physical product prototype, and instead can design and test through a virtual model that can improve quality and speed time-to-market—be it for a single machine or the commission of an entire manufacturing line.

And, once a machine or production line is running, manufacturers can use that virtual twin to create and test “what-if” scenarios. By using runtime models generated from the Ansys Twin Builder, users can adapt to the market demands with more agility and minimal risk. This is crucial in the industrial space, where manufacturers need to change line configurations quickly to adjust to consumer buying trends. So, manufacturers can understand an outcome without disrupting physical assets.

“Ansys empowers customers across industries to develop innovative, next-generation products by using simulation throughout the product lifecycle,” said Ansys president and CEO Ajei Gopal. “By combining Rockwell Automation’s extensive expertise and portfolio of industrial solutions with Ansys’ leading-edge simulation solutions, we will make it easier for industrial companies to build, validate and deploy digital twins. Simulation-based digital twins optimize factory operations, saving money by reducing unplanned downtime and enable engineers to test solutions virtually before doing physical repairs.”

And, we can’t forget that PTC—their mutual partner—will factor into the equation, as well.

“The Ansys piece is a case where we’re all saying there’s an unbelievable opportunity for us to all work together,” said Don Busiek, senior vice president of strategic alliances at PTC. “Customers can pick up solutions, buffet style, where they have pain points. But they’re preconfigured solutions. The only way to drive the quick ROI that’s required these days—months instead of years—is to have preconfigured solutions.”

Of course, to prove out the technology, Rockwell plans to use digital twin tools internally to accelerate new product and process development in order to improve quality and reduce testing time across its own organization. “The Ansys technology, developed with customers in mind, is a giant leap forward in the industrial sector,” said Rockwell chairman and CEO Blake Moret.

The ruggedized HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems allow enterprise organizations to run the RemoteSpark holographic remote worker support platform on their own private networks. Enterprise organizations now have the choice to operate this Mixed Reality system in the public cloud or on their own networks, allowing for more flexibility when optimizing remote support processes while taking into account an organization’s data governance policies. 

“Our client’s and prospect’s data can now live in the location defined by their policies without compromising processing speed, network and data bandwidth, or how the product functions,” said Ryan Groom, CTO and Co-Founder of Kognitiv Spark. “This gives them the flexibility to operate their remote support solutions in the cloud or own their own networks leveraging HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems. We’re looking forward to the future of our partnership as we move toward larger project deployments.” 

RemoteSpark, designed to help remote workers complete complex maintenance and repair tasks, runs on the Microsoft HoloLens 1 & 2, Surface Hub 2 and Windows 10 PCs with the backend on the Azure Cloud platform, Azure Stack HCI, and HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems.

On-premise and edge computing solutions are often sought by organizations operating in data-sensitive industries like aerospace manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, defense and others which have data governance policies requiring data to be processed and stored on their own privately controlled networks.

These policies have been a barrier to the adoption of Mixed Reality technologies in a number of enterprise organizations due to cloud-exclusive requirements of existing solutions. RemoteSpark housed on HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems gives organizations the option to deploy remote worker support where they need it while at the same time ensuring ultra-low latency, reducing network costs, and avoiding issues with network connectivity. 

“Partners like Kognitiv Spark and their innovative solutions like RemoteSpark are exactly why HPE created a new product category called HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems. Having purpose-built, edge optimized solutions that can run standard platforms like Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI makes it much easier for our partners to offer their solutions unmodified at the edge”, said Tripp Partain, CTO of HPE Converged Servers, Edge, and IoT Systems.  

The HPE Edgeline combined with RemoteSpark’s secure, low-bandwidth, Mixed Reality communications delivers a new dimension of industrial productivity and fulfils on the promise of industrial Mixed Reality or organizations of all sizes. 

The RELS (Remote Expert Live Support) system uses Atheer’s Augmented Reality management platform and RealWear’s HMT-1 head mounted device to connect Retailer technicians to Volkswagen Group UK Technical Support experts based in Milton Keynes.

Using RELS, technicians can get real-time live support, access technical documents with a few simple voice commands, and improve their skills with just-in-time training. RELS is a vital part of Volkswagen Group’s plan to service the 22 million new electric vehicles it plans to produce over the next 10 years.

RELS deployment began with a select collection of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle Retailers in 2018 and was further expanded to a group of Volkswagen Passenger Car and Audi Retailers that specialise in electric vehicles.

Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles currently use Volkswagen Group UK’s Loan Tool Scheme to deliver the headsets to their Retailers. Using the Loan Tool Scheme, Technical Support Experts can deploy a RELS headset direct to a Retailer via the parts delivery process within 48 hours! Once a RELS call has taken place, the Retailer simply returns the headset using the parts system. Over the coming months, the RELS project will be extended to SEAT & ŠKODA Retailers across the UK.

The introduction of RELS comes at a pivotal moment. In March of 2019, the Volkswagen Group announced plans to launch almost 70 new electric vehicles over the next 10 years – meaning that the projected number of vehicles to be built on the Group’s electric platforms in the next decade will grow to 22 million. The Group’s highly-anticipated new vehicles include the 2019 launched AUDI e-tron, Volkswagen ID.3, ID. CROZZ2, ID. BUZZ ID. VIZZION, as well as the SEAT el-born and the ŠKODA Vision E among others.

Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen AG, provided a broader context for initiatives like RELS in his recent announcement of Volkswagen’s accelerated introduction of new electric vehicles.

“Volkswagen is seeking to provide individual mobility for millions of people for years to come – individual mobility that is safer, cleaner and fully connected,” he said. “In order to shoulder the investments needed for the electric offensive we must make further improvements in efficiency and performance in all areas.”

How Will RELS Improve The Efficiency Of Aftersales Operations?

The roll-out of electric vehicles represents a generational change for the automotive industry. And Volkswagen Group recognizes the need for an entirely new kind of infrastructure to support 22 million electric vehicles by 2028. This includes everything from redesigned supply chains to a network of fast-charging stations throughout Europe.

These infrastructure changes represent a paradigm shift for aftersales operations.

Volkswagen Group is ready to transform the layout of its service bays to accommodate a new generation of vehicles. The Group is investing in new equipment, procedures, and skills training for its experts and technicians while improving its already high levels of customer service.

RELS supports these changes by providing Volkswagen Group UK Retailer technicians the guidance and real-time support they need for the next generation of electric vehicles. When technicians access the Atheer Augmented Reality Management Platform with RealWear HMT-1 headsets, they become connected workers with instant access to Volkswagen’s knowledge base. The system is intuitive, so anyone can learn to use it just minutes after putting it on.

With the availability of RELS, Volkswagen Group UK electric vehicle experts, based in Milton Keynes, can now provide real-time guidance to connected workers at any Volkswagen or Audi service bay, anywhere in the UK. This will save a tremendous amount of time and money, as experts will no longer need to travel to individual Retailers to complete challenging repairs.

When connected workers use RELS, experts can “see what they see” and respond with appropriate suggestions. This is how RELS will give Retailer technicians the ability to fix new vehicles faster.

Technicians using the Atheer Augmented Reality Platform and RealWear HMT-1 headsets are able to access the right information at the right time. With a few simple voice commands, these connected workers can retrieve technical documents for any vehicle they might encounter, enabling instant knowledge transfer. This way, technicians spend less time searching for paperwork and more time on repairs. Higher efficiency and less time in the shop leads to more customer satisfaction.

How Will Atheer and RealWear Impact Customer Service Within Volkswagen Group UK Retailers?

“We have worked with many teams researching the potential impact of Augmented Reality on their business operations. The Volkswagen Group UK team operating out of Milton Keynes is without a doubt among the best informed, creative, and innovative that we have had the pleasure of working with,” said Amar Dhaliwal, CEO of Atheer. “We are honoured to help Volkswagen Group UK set the bar for customer service of next generation vehicles.”

The team at Volkswagen Group UK is led by Metin Tahsin, Group Technical Support Manager. Metin’s team manages Technical Support and Technical Service Centres, and provides support to all Volkswagen Group UK brands (Audi, Volkswagen, Škoda, SEAT and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles). It delivers both proactive and reactive support to the Volkswagen Group UK’s five brand networks.

Metin measures the performance of Volkswagen Group UK’s business on key performance indicators relating to performance, volume, speed of response and Retailer satisfaction.

“RELS enables our Technical Service Centre to support Volkswagen Group’s innovative new vehicles with industry-leading customer service, reliability and safety,” he said. “We have seen the power of Augmented Reality and believe it will be a major driver to transform the way we service and maintain the millions of new Volkswagen Group vehicles that will hit in the road the next few years. And we value Atheer’s partnership and the power of the Atheer platform in making this a reality.”

According to Atheer advisor Salim Murr – who led, in succession, the Technical Service Department, Warranty Department, and the Logistics Department at BMW of North America’s U.S. Headquarters  – Volkswagen’s forward-thinking approach to Augmented Reality meets a key industry business need.

“The pace of innovation in the automotive industry continues to accelerate and is placing unprecedented pressure on the aftersales operations of Retailers. How do they provide the experience their customers expect while achieving the service margins their business needs? “ he said, “Augmented Reality has the ability to radically and quickly re-orient automotive Retailer service and warranty operations to meet these vital goals.”

The RealWear HMT-1 allows connected workers to access the Atheer platform in a form factor they can wear throughout the day. HMT-1 features an adjustable screen which mimics a 7-inch tablet held at arm’s length. The lightweight HMT-1 headset is totally voice-operated, so Volkswagen Group UK technicians can access the Atheer Augmented Reality Management Platform in any situation, even in noisy service bays, by leveraging the four microphones and advanced algorithms of the HMT-1 to perform noise cancellation prior to voice recognition.

RealWear HMT-1 is drop-proof from a height of 2 meters, and the HMT-1 battery lasts up to 10 hours. This means Volkswagen Group UK technicians can access Atheer’s Augmented Reality Management Platform throughout a full shift without any loss in productivity. Streaming video through the remote guidance features of Atheer’s platform uses more power, but even then a technician can ‘hot swap’ a battery in seconds without losing their place.

“Volkswagen has always been at the forefront of innovation,” said Andy Lowery, CEO of RealWear. “We are proud to partner with Atheer on this milestone initiative to promote Volkswagen’s goals of better customer service and higher-quality aftersales support with HMT-1 and Atheer’s connected worker solutions.”

Initial research focuses on enabling the real-time monitoring of field technicians to ensure their safety and to provide audiovisual assistance to perform asset maintenance, with the hope of adopting lightweight yet robust wearable devices, GlobalData noted.

These features of wearable technology encourage oil and gas companies to adopt helmets, smart glasses, wristbands and other devices that incorporate technologies such as wireless connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR).

Ravindra Puranik, oil and gas analyst at GlobalData, said, “Mobility is considered as the main driver and precursor to implementing any wearable technology in the oil and gas industry. Ever since the evolution of digital technologies, companies in the oil and gas sector are using industry-grade smartphones to capture field-level data and exchange information with onshore experts.”

“Instead of handheld smartphones, hands-free devices will increase work efficiency among the frontline workforce. Through different applications, wearable smart devices are expected to bring a paradigm shift in oil and gas field operations,” he added.

Wearable devices are also designed to provide safety to field staff by monitoring the wearer’s health condition, alerting them from exposure to potential hazards and also providing access to live locations of workers to the onshore support team. This, in turn, provides a sense of security among the workers and increases productivity.

“The oil and gas industry is integrating wearable tech with inspection and maintenance technologies to improve data collection and minimise risk to its workforce. Wearable devices in the oil and gas industry are made to withstand extreme temperature variations and resist oil, chemical spills, heavy rain, and dust among other things, making the working environment more secure,” he stated.

GlobalData’s thematic research identifies oil and gas companies, such as BP and Shell, among the leading adopters of wearable technology. In addition to these, several other companies, including Saudi Aramco, Eni, Marathon Petroleum, Chevron, ExxonMobil (AREA member), Baker Hughes, Schlumberger and NOV, have also started to incorporate wearable technology into their operations.

Included in the visual guide is:

• Strategies for closing the skills gap
• How AR fits into the skills gap strategy
• Relevant AR industrial applications
• Using AR to slow the skills drain
• Using AR to amplify current skill
• Using AR to refuel the skills tank
• AR success Snapshots – GSI and BAE Systems

View the PTC resource here

Read PTC’s AREA member profile

At Digital Construction Week 2019, Jonathan Hooper from Laing O’Rourke talked about what’s stopped many companies from realizing this potential and helped illustrate what it will mean for those same companies to move past such challenges.

There’s no denying that the technology is getting better and cheaper. Some companies are introducing standalone VR solutions for AEC professionals while others are bringing point clouds to AR/VR devices. Cheaper and more powerful headsets have also helped to remove traditional barriers around adoption, but those barriers are about more than logistics and costs. For many potential users, the challenges around adoption are more about the applications of VR/AR technology. Or rather, the applications of this technology that could be happening, but aren’t.

Potential users need to know more because understanding the software isn’t enough. They need to know how to drive it and deploy it. If they don’t, then these technologies end up being outsourced, if used at all. When that happens, VR/AR solutions are just a small piece of a project, rather than a holistic solution that can tie everything together.

While he’s seen many companies utilize VR and AR solutions at the start of a project to help sell a client into a project, that’s the same point when many stop using it. Sometimes it’s wholly discarded, which is as much of a shame as it is a waste. Once the baseline of a project has been built in these environments, that same asset can be used elsewhere instead of being reinvented or replaced. The potential to bring the technology into construction workflows is right there, but many don’t realize it.

So how do we make these VR and AR applications do more in these construction environments?

Ultimately, all of the applicable content and information needs to be driven through to the end. The same people who are working on the project need to also drive the development of the app. Content and embedded info need to be created and available as 3D model metadata via interactive APIs so that everyone can access everything in the app.

Measuring the productivity of this kind of endeavor is key though. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do it and Hooper talked through what it has meant to measure the value of VR/AR solutions. He showcased a health and safety walkthrough in a VR environment which highlighted where issues can be documented for specific health and safety issues. The models he was using had been created to pitch the product and these same assets were then being leveraged in multiple ways and phases, positively impacting the costs for the client.

Quality training presents another critical use case for a mixed reality headset.

Hooper mentioned that in the use case he was talking through, the stakeholders wanted their workforce to be able to understand if there are any areas of concern with an asset. By constructing a virtual environment, they could pull out those assets to visually look at and inspect them. In this way, the workforce can be educated to know what to look out for and document that information as desired, all of which can then be extracted into documents like Excel as needed.

That ability to export specific data into other formats and programs is essential, as VR and AR technology is really about creating apps, systems and programs that everyone can access. By getting all of this data into one application, users can collaborate more effectively and then take that data elsewhere.

That concept tied into another use case Hooper showed which was one focused on AR that used QR codes. The idea in using these codes was to reuse assets that already existed and easily drop them into 2D documentation to open them up to everyone. Paper with the QR code can be printed, and then people can easily create and see that asset. These solutions are critical for potential users to understand, because they can be deployed with next to no IT skills or software licenses. Bigger workforces can utilize them with little issue with the right support.

What’s the future for VR and AR technologies in construction?

In the short term, we’ll see them used to train existing staff and help diversify an existing workforce so that companies can go beyond AEC when they look to make new hires. The people who help adopt this technology don’t need to have that background to develop these apps, and they’re ones that will prove to be essential in solving the construction productivity imperative. However, these applications are just the beginning, as we’re only scratching the surface of what will eventually be possible.