In 2015, chief creative officer Rik Shorten saw an opportunity to use newly developed virtual reality technology and 3D animations in the medical field.

“They can select one of these codes and go through it and they can work as an attending and they’ll have a whole team in front of them virtually and they can do this anytime, anywhere,” Shorten said.  Bioflight VR is based in Akron, but the company works with hospitals, universities and medical device companies across the country, including hometown Akron Children’s Hospital.  Shorten said the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need for distance learning, remote training and virtual training.

“The schools are struggling to get the nurses in training their clinical hours. And so the states have moved quickly to recognize XR technologies as perfectly adequate substitutes for in-clinic training. And so this has moved that conversation forward much faster,” Shorten said.

Bioflight VR business director Pauly Suchy said the company recently teamed with Case Western Reserve to develop an application on physician empathy training. 

“A 30-minute experience but it spans over the timeline of a month where they’re experiencing all the financial, social, emotional and physical burdens that patients typically face. But it’s also, a good example of how to use this technology to standardize that learning experience so they can deliver better care,” Suchy said.

Both Shorten and Suchy said 12 hospital systems and 1,000 ER doctors currently use their platform.  Their goal is to expand that 10-fold in the coming years.  They said they know the access to quality health care resources in Ohio can make it possible. 

“The idea of a small company with limited resources, we need to get to the right people quickly. And the access here is different. It’s afforded me so many other freedoms than trying to make a small company work in Los Angeles,” Shorten said.

For more information, visit the BioflightVR website. 

The new laboratory will be exclusively dedicated to the provision of cell and gene therapy manufacturing training and will utilise both digital and established teaching platforms.

Learners will be trained using state-of-the-art equipment capable of large-scale manufacture to meet the need for skilled workers to help accelerate the scale-up of growing cell and gene therapy companies locally.

The laboratory supports the national drive for skills development within the cell and gene therapy industry, and complements existing skills initiatives coordinated by CGT Catapult, including the Advanced Therapies Skills Training Network and the Advanced Therapies Apprenticeship Community.

Hertfordshire LEP has selected five key projects to receive a share of its £16.8m allocation from Government’s Getting Building Fund, which aims to kickstart local economic recovery.

The five Hertfordshire projects are set to deliver over 1,500 high value jobs across high-tech sectors including film and TV; cell and gene therapies; advanced therapeutics; and smart construction.

The LEP’s £3m funding will allow CGT Catapult to equip the laboratory with the latest digital technologies including augmented reality, high-throughput manufacturing platforms and advanced analytics for the industrial manufacture of cell and gene therapies.

The funding will also help expand upon the industry-leading capabilities available at CGT Catapult, including at the facility in Stevenage which has been instrumental to the growth of the UK’s cell and gene therapy industry. The cell and gene therapy cluster around Stevenage has also recently been recognised as a High Potential Opportunity zone, set to attract overseas investment to the area to further strengthen the UK’s sectorial advantage.

Matthew Durdy, CEO at CGT Catapult said: “This Local Enterprise Partnership investment in the new integration laboratory in Stevenage has allowed us to move forward with this dedicated facility for the cell and gene therapy industry.

“This initiative will help to further expand the cell and gene therapy cluster around Stevenage and support the development of the UK skills base in the industry.”

The two technology titans will look to explore enterprise-grade solutions for mobile edge computing and end-to-end private 5G networks that run on open architecture, looking to empower employees by use of 5G-enabled Samsung Galaxy devices.

The expansive collaboration will also see both companies studying how manufacturers can implement Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions on private 5G/4G networks as well as 5G mobile devices. Naturally, Samsung Galaxy 5G will be utilized to research solutions, but so will Samsung’s end-to-end enterprise network solutions.

IBM on the other hand will bring its network management, hybrid cloud, and edge computing expertise to the table, combined Big Blue’s industrial AI applications and the open-source enterprise framework of leading solutions supplier Red Hat.

The hybridization of these various 4IR technologies by leveraging the capabilities of 5G devices, cloud-native 5G networks, and advanced edge computing platforms, is building up from another recent partnership between Samsung and Red Hat, where Samsung’s 5G network solutions where be built on Red Hat OpenShift containerized infrastructure – allowing enterprises to quickly deploy or customize personalized solutions across any cloud, on-premise, or private network environment.

The goal is to develop open, hybrid cloud solutions that enable enterprises to glean greater insights from data gathered at the frontlines of 4IR organizations – be it from the factory floor, or an oil rig, or a regular office space. The research will ideally result in solutions that can improve operational performance, help reduce workplace errors, and also minimize downtime.

“The move to standalone 5G has accelerated the adoption of IIoT solutions and will require businesses to adopt an edge computing strategy that allows them to manage their IT environments from anywhere,” said KC Choi, Samsung Electronics’ EVP and the head of the Global Mobile B2B Team, Mobile Communications Business. “We are excited to work with IBM to discover how our unique devices, mobile IoT and network solutions can provide frontline workers with access to better data and more actionable insights to take their business to the next level.”

This formidable alliance of enterprise solution giants will also look at adopting crucial 4IR technologies like IoT, AI, cloud, edge computing, and augmented reality (AR) for private 5G networks. At the same time, brand new innovations being co-developed will be aimed at equipping workers with the 4IR-ready tools to identify manufacturing faults using AI-enabled image recognition, use thousands of IIoT sensors to build smart agriculture solutions, or facilitate employee training and productivity using AR.

“The transition of communication networks from proprietary architecture to intelligent, software-defined hybrid cloud platforms enables the creation of enormous new value in the 5G and edge era,” noted Steve Canepa, the Global GM and MD of IBM’s Communications Sector. “5G devices and network solutions from Samsung, along with IBM and Red Hat’s open, hybrid cloud capabilities, can help organizations across all industries accelerate their transformation and solve real business problems, while unlocking the true power of 5G and edge.”

The article beings with a true story about Hugh Roddy, VP of global engineering and project management at Chobani. Up until 10 months ago Roddy spent much of his time on the road traveling between the company’s plants in New York and Idaho, as well as periodically heading overseas to check in on the Australian factory. But his road warrior ways have been curbed by COVID-19, and now—like many of his manufacturing peers—he has to manage the projects and operations remotely.

As a result, Roddy has been turning to technology, including HMI (human machine interface) and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and augmented reality (AR) to remotely manage assets and troubleshoot machines. But he also needs visibility into how each plant is operating overall. A few years ago, that may have been a problem. But since Chobani’s adoption of Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform, which he describes as a modern day OT (operations technology) operating system, he’s been able to develop many different applications and dashboards, giving him and his team the ability to manage new projects, assist with the operations of current production lines, and gain an eagle’s eye view of individual plants from the enterprise level.

“When I log into our Ignition system I can see New York, Twin Falls (Idaho), and Australia at any given moment in time,” Roddy says. “The plants are more connected to what is happening downstream and upstream…and at the enterprise level it allows plants to be highly integrated from the plant floor to the executive level and back down.”

While Chobani adopted the Ignition platform years ago, other companies are just now starting their digital development journey—a process that has been put on fast-forward due to COVID-19. Now, every business, regardless of the industry segment, is finding new ways to stay connected.

People and processes
“The pandemic is accelerating the movement to digital and smart factories to keep operations running as efficiently as possible and to share [information] across cells in a plant, lines in a plant, or plants in a network,” says Paul Wellener, a vice chairman at Deloitte LLP and the leader of the company’s U.S. Industrial Products and Construction practice.

Deloitte, together with the Manufacturer’s Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI), recently published a report called “Accelerating Smart Manufacturing: The Value of an Ecosystem Approach,” which indicates that long-term partnerships in the form of an ecosystem can accelerate digital initiatives and drive results. According to the report, while the manufacturing industry was already on a digital transformation journey, it has historically been complicated by the complexity of digitally connecting assets that, in some cases, are more than 50 years old.

The disruption and economic hardship caused by the ongoing pandemic have increased the urgency to accelerate smart manufacturing initiatives for future competitiveness. In a recent MAPI CEO poll, 85% of leaders agreed or strongly agreed that investments in smart factories will rise by June 2021. And, while economists predict that overall business investments could be low for the next three cycles, respondents in the study indicated they are directing a greater share of their factory investments toward smart manufacturing initiatives.

Read the complete article on Automation World.

Saratoga, California-based Mojo Vision has developed a smart contact lens with a tiny built-in display that lets you view augmented reality images on a screen sitting right on your eyeballs. It’s a pretty amazing innovation, but the company has to make sure that it works with contact lenses as they have been built for decades. The partnership with Menicon will help the company do that, Mojo Vision chief technology officer Mike Wiemer said in an interview with VentureBeat.

“It’s a development agreement, and it could turn into a commercial agreement,” Wiemer said. “I’m very excited to work with them.”

Under the joint-development agreement, the two companies will work on various feasibility studies on production and manufacturing, exploring a potential long-term working relationship as Mojo tries to commercialize the technology.

Mojo Vision is developing Mojo Lens, which it calls the first true smart contact lens. Nagoya, Japan-based Menicon claims to be the only company in the world dedicated to all areas of contact lens-related business, including material development, lens designing, rigid gas permeable lens technology, manufacturing of lenses, and care solutions.

Read the whole article on VentureBeat.

Readers may also be interested in a related topic detailed in a recently published article:  The science fiction future of contact lenses, quoting 32 different sources.

In the article, the following questions are answered:

• What is the technology behind smart contacts?
• Can you power it with solar?
• What are augmented reality lenses?
• How close are we to being able to record video using it?

With Infinera’s XTM Series, SSE Enterprise Telecoms leverages an industry-leading optical solution optimized for 5G transport with high-performance synchronization capabilities and low latency. The network’s Layer 2 packet optical aggregation features also provide enterprise customers with high-bandwidth connectivity services over the same network. These benefits extend across SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ network, which upon completion will span over 30,000 km, delivering the high-speed, performance, and reach required to support the growing digital needs of UK organizations.

“This network expansion with Infinera’s XTM Series is key to our UK initiative as it enables new technologies including the IIoT and autonomous vehicles, as well as opening the door to new business technologies such as seamless, instant video streaming and immersive virtual and augmented reality,” said Dave Eddy, COO, SSE Enterprise Telecoms. “Infinera’s XTM solution provided the high performance, scalability, and flexibility required to meet our network needs.”

“The UK market’s bandwidth is growing exponentially, and SSE Enterprise Telecoms is poised to meet this growing demand as it more than doubles its number of connected exchanges,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Sales at Infinera. “We are proud to be a part of SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ network expansion as it ushers the era of 5G with the unique capabilities of Infinera’s XTM.”

The ways in which frontline workers can benefit from AR digital twins mentioned in the article are:

• Navigating and monitoring
• Conducting assisted maintenance operations
• Reviewing complex machinery
• Planning industrial plants and facilities
• Product development
• Inspections
• Visualising and interpreting data (on-site and remotely)

The Arvizio XR Platform enables user to visualise digital twins at table-top or life size scale. It also supports remote 3D collaboration across XR devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Magic Leap, and HoloLens 2. Users can also import 3D BIM, LiDAR, CAD, and photogrammetry assets for integration with Autodesk cloud services, such as Fusion 360 and BIM 360. Reality captures and 3D models acts as a “digital canvas” for arranging AR data with the digital twin. It operates as follows:

• A graphical user interface tool associates documents, images, workflow items, and IoT data with objects in the model
• Models and scans are aligned on-site, overlaying AR data on top of real-world objects
• The XR Platform interfaces on IoT data hubs or the cloud, providing integration of live IoT data with 3D objects

Jonathan Reeves, CEO at Arvizio, is quoted to have said that the pandemic has led to increased Industry 4.0 adoption in enterprises, who are “seeking innovative technologies” to improve ROI and productivity. Using their XR Platform, customers can incorporate digital twins and AR to enhance efficiency.

Key feature updates for the Arvizio XR Platform for digital twins listed in the article are:

• XR Connect: collaboration services with shared video, allowing for expert assistance and remote inspection
• Expanded device support: now includes iPhone 12 Pro, iPad Pro with LiDAR, and Oculus Quest
• Arvizio’s advanced hybrid rendering: allows visualisation of large-scale point clouds and models
• IoT data integration and custom integration services: provides customer assistance with AR and digital twin migrations

The article concludes by stating that these new capabilities will be entering Beta this month, with availability expected next month. For information on Arvizio’s website, visit here.

By investing in RealWear HMT-1 hands-free headsets equipped with Microsoft Teams, Mars Petcare found the perfect complement to its vision for more productive workplaces. Effortless, hands-free, and safer collaboration tools remain key to helping firstline associates at Mars Petcare become true equipment owners, making factories more productive and reducing travel and downtime due to maintenance.

Supporting autonomous maintenance with purpose-built technology

As Global Autonomous Maintenance Pillar Leader at Mars Petcare, one of David Oswald’s many responsibilities is autonomous maintenance. “As part of our Mars Supply Excellence program, we train and support our firstline teams to become true equipment owners responsible for the long-term reduction of losses. Our goal is to free up time on the shop floor to do the proactive work and make sure the equipment stays in a healthy condition.”

Through autonomous maintenance, Mars trains firstline associates to perform straightforward maintenance and preventative steps that keep equipment running like new—and keep factories at their most productive. The goal is for more streamlined factories and greater efficiency. “We say stop the stops,” says Oswald. “We target the short stops, such as resetting a machine or clearing a jam. We want an operator to run 240+ minutes without any intervention on their machine.”

Part of Oswald’s role requires finding the right technologies to support the Mars Supply Excellence program. To make collaboration effortless, he looks for highly mobile, hands-free devices designed specifically for the noisy, high-traffic reality of a manufacturing facility. That’s where RealWear hands-free headsets and Teams comes in, providing firstline associates on the factory floor tools that connect them to maintenance experts instantly for troubleshooting and training.

Teams on Realwear uses Teams meetings to power remote communication between HMT-1 users and their office-based colleagues. “The fact that the RealWear device works with Microsoft Teams was a big selling point for us,” says Oswald. “This allows us to connect associates on the shop floor with large numbers of people and collaborate in real time. Plus, the noise-canceling aspect of the ProBuds hearing-protection headphones and the hard-hat make it safe and ideal for the kinds of environments we work in.”

Other topics addressed in detail in the article include

1. Keeping associates more safe and secure with the right tools
2. Training and educating associates to drive efficiencies with new productivity tools
3. Saving travel time and supporting sustainability

Read the whole article online at Microsoft

See RealWear’s AREA member profile 

See Microsoft’s AREA member profile 

Vuzix Smart Glasses are now being used in hospitals around the world to perform a wide range of functions including training, virtual rounds within ICUs, triage in the emergency room and in the operating room to guide surgeons during surgery, and to provide remote training and mentor remote doctors.  The past year has been a challenging one for many businesses in supporting their operations, but it also has opened the door for the deployment of new innovative technologies like Smart Glasses, especially within the healthcare industry.

Over the course of 2020, healthcare has emerged as an important new business segment for Augmented Reality (AR) smart glasses. Vuzix has seen smart glasses move from a preconceived idea in healthcare to actual deployments and everyday use inside hospitals and medical facilities both domestically here in the United States and globally, with significant deployments in South America, Europe and the APAC region.  Over the last several months, Vuzix has rapidly emerged as a go-to provider of smart glasses-based solutions to support the healthcare industry in a variety of capacities.  As a result, the healthcare sector has been an important growth contributor for Vuzix throughout 2020 and the Company expects this trend to continue into the foreseeable future. In early 2021, for example, Vuzix will be supporting the rollout of Verizon’s 5G-enabled EMS solution, which is focused on the delivery of enhanced medical augmented reality to support the patient EMS journey from pre-incident to recovery, powered by Verizon’s 5G Ultra-Wideband network for first responders and public safety.

Read the original press release here.

Designing 3D experiences often requires coding knowledge from games development. Therefore, MetaVRse developed the platform to allow a virtual world to exist with ease of editing. Although the platform is described as a “3D web game engine and spatial design creator tool”, users in any enterprise or industry can invent their own virtual environment.

Alan Smithson, CEO of MetaVRse, has explained that their no-low code approach enables any user to participate in creating. The platform operates on every system, browser, and device, with no need for different versions or apps, and without code.

After launching in June this year, MetaVRse has since announced partnerships to increase availability for training, marketing, and showrooms. The platform has partnered with programs from the following companies:

• AREA Member Qualcomm 
• Nvidia
• Autodesk
• Oculus
• Founders Factory
• Creative Destruction Lab

MetaVRse applications will soon be deployed in more enterprise sectors. Low technical requirements are expected to encourage creators to adopt AR. Julie Smithson, Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer, has said that MetaVRs has “opened the door” to creators by removing the need to code.

Read the full article here.