The visualisation team at the Coventry-based MTC has been made a partner of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Programme – one of a select group of organisations in Europe to gain the sought-after recognition.

The accolade recognises the MTC’s advanced work in the fields of augmented, mixed and virtual reality, in particular its ability to deliver high-value generating applications in an enterprise environment. It will mean that the MTC will be able to help companies remotely using Microsoft visualisation programmes.

The accolade came after a stringent examination by Microsoft of the MTC’s capabilities and breadth of mixed reality applications, concentrating on client and end-user experiences. The recognition means the MTC will have the opportunity to work with Microsoft on joint projects with companies who can benefit from the technology. They will also work with Microsoft to develop apps for advanced manufacturing and teach other companies how to use Microsoft’s mixed reality programmes.

MTC technology manager David Varela said the partnership was already opening doors.

Read MTC AREA member profile page.

It’s the latest agreement between the two tech giants since Lenovo acquired IBM’s personal computing business in 2005. Lenovo’s server business includes IBM’s x86 server group that Lenovo bought in 2014.

The Lenovo-IBM server agreement covers more than 200 countries.

Here’s how IBM says the service will work:

“When a customer connects with an agent for Lenovo’s server, storage, or networking services, IBM’s Virtual Assistant for Technical Support uses its natural language capabilities and contextual recognition to personalize the conversation. It is designed to ask targeted questions about service issues and obtain solution advice. It will also access key customer information, aligning to Lenovo’s focus on driving a fast, effortless, and proactive customer support experience.”

Augmented Reality is set to enable more than 19,000 field agents to help deliver a consistent client experience around the globe by allowing customers and technicians to share real-time video of machines requiring repair with fellow IBM professionals to help diagnose problems and illustrate the best practices to solve them.

Read the full article here.

The article features many quotes and figures from thought leaders who are members of The AREA, Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance and is based on discussions across the industry extracted from Digi-Capital’s Augmented/Virtual Reality Report Q2 2019.

“While consumer AR/VR is proving itself, enterprise AR/VR is already delivering strong return on investment for major corporations like Walmart, Lockheed Martin, and Verizon.

But the market remains a series of connected point solutions, not a fully functioning ecosystem (yet).”

That YET is very important.

If you’ve not already been following the AREA for a while and fully understand our mission, this would be a good time to tell you that the entire existence of The AREA Alliance is devoted to developing a cohesive AR enterprise ecosystem and accelerating adoption of enterprise AR.

The article addresses how is enterprise AR/VR driving ROI today, and looks are what else it needs to scale across platforms.

The focus of the article is defining by number of users how many users are needed to qualify the term active users.

AREA members quoted in the article include PTC Vuforia, Upskill, Lockheed Martin.

Further related reading:

Read the full article on Venture Beat

AREA Enterprise AR ROI Best Practice (May 2018)

AREA Enterprise AR ROI Case Study

The latest article includes a roundup that mentions some of the AREA’s members and the great work they are doing to accelerate adoption of enterprise Augmented Reality.

10,000 RealWear HMDs heading to front line industrial workers in Kazakhstan. The Qualcomm Snapdragon powered headsets will be provided by UROS as part of a digitization project aiming to accelerate XR global adoption. The partnership between the three companies marks the largest order of industrial HMDs RealWear has had to date. The RealWear HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1 provide a heads up display and voice-powered controls.

ThirdEye Gen lands 5G partnership with Verizon and patents for improving its mixed reality glasses. The makers of the “smallest mixed reality glasses” will be Verizon’s first 5G smart glasses partner. ThirdEye Gen recently won two patents: AR Assisted Large Data Streaming for streaming AR content wirelessly, and an OLED Driver for improved display quality.

The article also takes a look at:

• Khronos Group aims to establish 3D assets standard for cross-vendor ecommerce
• Labster raises $21 Million series B for expanding virtual lab catalog
• HTC Vive conducts survey of over 1800 VR developers

Links:

Read the full article on Forbes

AREA Member profile RealWear Inc

AREA Member profile ThirdEye Gen

Key points from the article include:

• AR may benefit investor-owned, municipal and cooperative utilities in improving business processes, speed power restoration and help address the challenge of an aging, retiring utility workforce facilitating the preservation of institutional knowledge.
• According to industry experts, the energy and the utility sector are expected to spend more than $15bn annually by 2020 on AR technology.
• In the long run, these emerging technologies – like AR, VR, AI, robotics and digital transformation – will bring an acceleration in revenue growth, increase organisations’ agility and improve risk management.
• The utility industry faces some significant workforce challenges ahead as the baby boomers retire, which was highlighted by a 2017 Department of Energy utility workforce assessment.

To read the article in full see Power-Technology.com

Augmented Reality (AR) is rapidly growing and expanding into countless business and industrial applications.

Spatial computing is used as a broad term to describe the way humans interact with computers in the same surrounding. In other words, in spatial computing machines occupy the same space as humans rather than being contained to one single location.

According to Markets and Markets, the Augmented Reality market is expected to reach $60,55 billion worldwide by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 40.29 percent during the forecast period comprised between 2018 and 2023. Increasing interest and investments from top technology giants are directly linked to driving the growth of the AR market.

Overall, the AR software market will lead the growth by 2023 thanks to the increasing use of smartphones, tablets, and other devices in consumer, commercial, and enterprise used for the implementation of the AR technology.

While there is an increasing demand for AR in healthcare, retail, and e-commerce, there is plenty of emerging opportunity and increasing demand for AR in architecture and the enterprise industry.

AR is a game changer applicable in almost every industry sector.

The article moves on to discuss smart city planning and building with the use of Augmented Reality technology.

In the construction industry, for instance, immersive technology can help in the development of smart cities with Augmented Reality becoming an integral part of the construction process.

Cities collect huge amounts and data. Augmented Reality can make that data visible. Using AR, architects can find a more creative and straightforward way to show urban planners how their projects are going to look like in real life by creating an engaging visualization, triggering faster decision making.

It can be building a new transportation center or the next skyscraper in a city; in all cases using Augmented Reality makes the job easier.

Now with the help of Augmented Reality platforms for business, it is easy to design smart city projects. WakingApp is a professional Augmented Reality studio that enables professionals such as builders and architects to leverage budding technology. Projects can be visualized before building it which avoids a lot of mistakes.

What is interesting about the WakingApp technology is that developers and designers don’t need to have any previous coding experience in order to take advantage of the toolset. They can rapidly create quality AR experiences to showcase construction projects with even a limited amount of coding experience.

The MLM Group, an engineering, environmental, and building control design consultancy was able to transform its presentations by using WakingApp AR technology to showcase their projects to customers beyond the blueprint using the AR Studio.

“Augmented Reality experiences add cost-saving value to construction projects and make the entire building process more efficient because right from the start, engineers and architects are able to create a detailed, interactive example of the end project,” Matan Libis, CEO of WakingApp told Interesting Engineering.

“AR provides builders, and their clients, with a level of understanding that far exceeds any blueprints or 3D models, and often AR experiences can be created in a fraction of the time, offering users both practicality and efficacy,” he said.

Microsoft’s Mixed Reality HoloLens headset can bring 2D blueprints to life. In the construction site, workers can combine 3D models with real time data. They can see problems and faults in the real world and fix them before ahead of building.

This speeds up construction processes and elevates the quality of the end product. Using this technology construction workers can elevate their skills to a new level, augmenting their knowledge and using it to make better decisions.

Royal Dutch Shell plans to connect its frontline field workers with back office expertise through the use of a new augmented reality (AR) hard hat. The hands-free AR wearable comes with a built-in computer that’s voice-controlled and equipped with a micro-display and a camera. This makes it possible for Shell’s workers in the field to send pictures and video back to the office in real-time and receive over-the-shoulder assistance from remote operations experts when making repairs and doing work on sensitive equipment around the globe.

Shell teamed up with Honeywell to deploy these helmets from RealWear, which are the first wearable device certified to operate in hazardous conditions where explosive gases are present. The oil and gas giant has already field tested the devices and will now roll them out to 24 operational sites around the world.

“Just as laptops and mobile phones are standard for desk workers, voice command and augmented reality for wearable computers will become commonplace for field staff in our industry, driving safety and productivity,” says Michael Kaldenbach, lead for Shell Digital Realities, a center of excellence for the company that focuses on AR, virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR).

The move marks another step in Shell’s journey to fold in AR, VR, and MR into operational and training environments through its Digital Realities group. Last fall the firm announced it was working with EON Reality to develop a global immersive training program that can be scaled across numerous industrial facilities. Developing an immersive training platform makes it possible for Shell to use ‘digital twins’ to recreate any training environment and put it in a module that can be offered on-demand and in numerous languages. This breaks down a lot of training barriers that enterprises like Shell face in training a global workforce operating in very exacting technical environments.

“Operational training lends itself well for virtual reality,” Kaldenbach said at the time. ““Shell is on a digital transformation journey. AR/VR is a key linking technology in that helps us visualize data and environments and make them tangible for our operational staff.”

According to estimates from analysis at Statista, the worldwide market for AR and VR is expected to grow from a projected $20.4 billion this year to $192.7 billion by 2022. According to the recent 2019 Augmented and Virtual Reality Survey Report from Perkins Coie, startup investors are bullish on the prospects of extended reality technologies. Around 90 percent of them think AR, VR, and XR technology will be as ubiquitous as mobile devices by 2025. They rank manufacturing and industrial applications like those Shell uses AR for to be the fourth most relevant environment for extended reality to take off, behind gaming, healthcare and medical devices, and education.

Meantime, experts with Accenture Labs say that extended reality technology “will be critical to the enterprise of the future.” They say that applications like Shell will act as the spear tip for greater extended reality usage across all industries in the near future.

“Indeed, industries with high-risk working environments, such as energy, manufacturing or construction, are already reaping the benefits of immersive learning,” an Accenture Labs report detailed. “Now, other industries are exploring the space.”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has complex and long standing humanitarian crises with about 13 million people in dire need of assistance. With less than one physician for every 10,000 people in DRC, and even fewer in conflict areas, rural health facilities are left without skilled staff and lack access to essential quality healthcare. This results in high morbidities, such as women and newborns dying during childbirth, and the rapid spread of disease epidemics due to inaccurate field diagnoses.

Iristick smart glasses take the portability of optical wear and the e-health solution of telemedicine, to connect remote medical staff with global medical expertise. The smart glasses make the eyes and ears of healthcare workers in remote areas and conflict zones available in real time to medical experts who can help diagnose, lend practical experience, or guide with their knowledge. Iristick has the potential to connect isolated medical staff with a global network of peer support and medical expertise.

Related articles:

Iristick selected as finalist for remote ehealth smartglasses (September 2018)

Iritistick AREA member profile

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) does a vital job in helping the air travel and air cargo industries meet the challenges of growing passenger and cargo demand, climate change and an evolving global economy that increasingly relies on goods being shipped quickly around the world by air.

IATA represents some 290 airlines in 120 countries and its member airlines carry 82% of the world’s air traffic. It is working aggressively to find and offer solutions that help its members meet a myriad of challenges.

At the World Cargo Symposium in Singapore last month, IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac outlined some of the work his organization is doing to help spur and enable innovation in cargo handling – particularly as it relates to cargo handling warehouses, where goods shipped as part of e-commerce transactions are handled and dispatched to their ultimate destinations.

In talking about the need for change in warehouse facilities, he underscored the need to move more quickly in modernizing warehouse cargo operations and processes.

“Another example where urgent innovation is needed is the facilities we use. The e-commerce world is looking for fully automated high-rack warehouses, with autonomous green vehicles navigating through the facility, and employees equipped with artificial intelligence and augmented reality tools,” he said. “The average cargo warehouse today is an impressive sight. But there is a huge gap to fill.”

Brendan Sullivan, head of e-commerce and cargo operations for IATA, is charged with helping IATA members to speed up the modernization of warehouse facilities. And he’s become a big believer in using augmented reality to do it.

Last year, Sullivan and his team engaged with Atheer to help pilot new augmented reality options for IATA members – and were surprised and delighted by the results. He highlighted those results in a recent presentation at the World Cargo Symposium.

Sullivan said that IATA’s key findings were that it was able to achieve increased performance – and notably achieve a 30 percent improvement in the speed of cargo handling and a staggering 90 percent reduction in errors.

All of that means that air cargo carriers will be able to move more cargo through their warehouses, faster and with much greater accuracy. IATA’s implementation of Atheer makes effective use of the digital work instruction design and delivery capabilities of the Atheer AR Management Platform. It allows air cargo operators to have instant access to clear, consistent and unambiguous work instructions for key tasks (such as accepting cargo as ready for air carriage).

Those work instructions can be delivered directly into the field of view of warehouse cargo handlers (though the use of smart glasses, tablets or smartphones) and updated quickly and accurately via wireless connections from the mobile devices used by the warehouse.

IATA’s Brendan Sullivan reports that air cargo operators are excited by the prospect of implementing AR in their facilities. “People were really excited – because this solution is not dependent on hardware, is easy to trial and easy to implement,” he said. “That is one of the hooks for people when they hear about it.”

IATA is now working to test and on-board Atheer’s AR-based cargo handling work instructions at additional facilities.

Read the Atheer original blog post.

From RealWear’s Press Release:

“A new era of computing has arrived. Just as laptops and mobile phones are standard for desk workers, voice command and augmented reality for wearable computers will become commonplace for field staff in our industry, driving safety and productivity.”

Michael Kaldenbach, Digital Realities Lead, Shell

The RealWear HMT-1Z1 is an intrinsically safe voice-controlled device with a micro-display that shows an image to a user as if they were viewing a seven-inch screen. The head-mounted computer is the world’s first commercially available device that permits field workers in highly restricted ATEX Zone 1 C1/D1 zones to use a wearable device where potentially explosive gases are present, helping to reduce health and safety work hazards.

Shell is currently using the HMT-1Z1 for remote assistance. For instance, if equipment needs maintenance, a worker can get real-time assistance via a video call, allowing an expert to essentially see through the eyes of the onsite worker and offer over-the-shoulder assistance. In one example, an expert uses Augmented Reality to remotely “draw” on the worker’s screen which is visualized on the head mounted screen.

Shell has already field tested and deployed 40 RealWear HMT-1Z1s in multiple countries and under different conditions and is now looking to roll out the devices further.

“In close collaboration with Shell and together with RealWear’s technology, Honeywell helps to change the way field workers operate, enabling higher levels of competency, productivity and safety assurance. By addressing key customer needs, Honeywell supports industrial companies like Shell in their digital transformation journey.”

John Rudolph, President, Honeywell Process Solutions

Honeywell is the global supplier of the HMT-1Z1 and provides additional software applications, services and hands-on field knowledge.

“We are thrilled to be working with Shell and Honeywell on this historic connected field worker program. It is the people in the field who are at the heart of every company. This vote of confidence by Shell marks a turning point for the 2.7 billion deskless workers globally who increasingly require the same connectivity as those who sit behind a desk.”

Andy Lowery, Cofounder and CEO, RealWear

Shell is an early adopter of augmented and virtual reality solutions for plants and workers. The move to wearables and mixed reality is part of Shell’s broader digital transformation.