A New Approach to Workforce Learning

Anglo American developed its Sustainable Mining Plan in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The UN’s Sustainability Goals relating to education are aimed at ensuring equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education – including university – by 2030.

And, by the same date, the UN also seeks to substantially increase the number of youths and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship.

According to Jennifer Rogers, Head of Learning at Anglo American, these exciting goals have led to a broad and innovative new approach to workforce learning. Jennifer leads Learning Strategy across the organisation, and is responsible for design, rollout and continued expansion of the newly-formed Learning Ecosystem, designed to enhance workforce development and further solidify people as Anglo American’s largest strategic advantage.

Last year, for example, this work led to an initial implementation of Atheer’s award-winning AR platform on RealWear HMT-1 headset – at the Anglo American Platinum Rustenburg Base Metals Refinery facility in Rustenburg, South Africa.

The Atheer platform allowed workers at the facility to connect via “See-What-I-See” interactive video calls with colleagues in Australia who were subject matter experts in the on-the-job issues that the team in Rustenburg was tackling.

In addition, Anglo American Platinum team members in Rustenburg (such as  RBMR general manager Fortune Mashimbye, shown right) were able to use the platform to receive and use relevant work instructions right in their field of view on their connected AR headsets without having to leave the work they were doing.

“Using Augmented Reality at Anglo American allows us to address some of the key challenges that are vital to the success of our global Sustainable Mining Plan” said Jennifer Rogers. “It provides our workforce with new, language-independent opportunities to learn and develop new skills that will help them transition to the future of work.”

The Next Phase of AR-Driven Learning

From its initial work with AR in 2018, Ms. Rogers said the company realized that while providing access to remote experts and work instructions was definitely a huge benefit, being able to bring the broad base of the company’s learning content to an “augmented workforce” – and capturing and using the learner’s data to further direct and guide their development – would be even more powerful. And thus began a close working relationship between Atheer, Anglo American and industry-leading learning content development and distribution platform Xyleme.

In 2019, Atheer has worked closely with Anglo American to bring content authored in Xyleme into the Atheer platform for use by global Anglo American workforce. The work undertaken by the three companies represents an example of true innovation in learning – leveraging an award-winning AR platform and a rich, full-featured learning content management system (LCMS), content delivery service (CDS) and learning record store (LRS).

Leslie Farinella, Chief Operating Officer at Xyleme, explains how all of these components work together. “Xyleme and Atheer are partnering to take Anglo American learning content into augmented reality,” she said. “Atheer is able to pass content authored in Xyleme’s Learning Content Management System (LCMS) to Atheer work instructions, where it can be accessed by learners via smart glasses or mobile devices. Atheer can capture experience data collected from learners and use our robust APIs to pass it back to Xyleme’s Learning Record Store (LRS) for easy extraction.”

Atheer CEO Amar Dhaliwal said he is excited by the results of the collaboration between the three companies – and sees an exciting opportunity for companies like Anglo American as they begin to realize the full impact of becoming an Augmented Enterprise. “It is not often that you get to do work as ground-breaking and rewarding as this,” he said. “Not only can we help empower Anglo American’s diverse global workforce, but we get the chance to bring the rich body of learning content authored in Xyleme to frontline workers that have typically not been able to use it unless they pulled away completely from their day-to-day work.”

The X2 is an all-in-one hardware and software solution using mixed reality to provide workers from numerous industries the ability to “see” more with the addition of contextual overlays. With its AR solution, ThirdEye intends to target field services, health care, manufacturing, architecture, education and insurance.

ThirdEye claims the X2 Glasses are the smallest MR headset on the market weighing in at only six ounces.

The AR smartglasses also provide a wide, 42-degree field of view (the Microsoft HoloLens 2 has a 43-degree FOV), powerful sensors – including thermal, ambient light and flashlight – as well as built-in simultaneous localization and mapping capabilities. This technology is known as VisionEye SLAM and allows for advanced AR features.

The glasses also include two grey-scale cameras, a high-resolution RGB camera, (13-megapixel), three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer and a three-axis compass.

“Our goal is to become the most recognizable smart glasses in the AR and MR industry, and so far we’ve created the widest field of view in the smallest form factor possible,” said Nick Cherukuri, founder of ThirdEye.

X2 Glasses run on Android and have hundreds of apps available via the ThirdEye App Store. The company has created the platform so that it’s easy to develop for it: Developers can use existing software development kits and application programming interfaces to build apps.

To further ease development, the company also offers ThirdEye Workspace, a powerful enterprise-ready software platform built into the X2 Glasses. With Workspace, developers will have tools that can take advantage of advanced AR/MR capabilities such as live AR remote assistance and 3D SLAM based computer-aided design modeling and overlay.

“The X2 Glasses are unlike anything else on the market right now – between the affordable price tag, powerful technology and beautiful form – we are giving workers all across the enterprise the opportunity to really elevate their level of work,” said Cherukuri. “Coupled with our advanced AR software platform, we’re simultaneously providing companies with nearly 40 percent savings in productivity improvements.”

The X2 Glasses are now available for purchase at a price tag of $1,950. Customers pre-ordering the smartglasses can get a $300 discount on ThirdEye’s website and pre-orders will be available until mass production is complete and shipping begins in October.

XMReality Business is the fastest and easiest way for companies to provide high-quality customer support using video communications and Augmented Reality (AR). Since announcing the pre-launch in June, a number of customers have successfully trialed the service over the summer. Today XMReality Business is being launched commercially.

XMReality Business provides the ability to send links that allow users to quickly connect to any other person for help and instructions, known as Remote Guidance.

“The web client will be perfect for our customers” says Martin Forsberg, Global Support at Arcam, which uses XMReality’s service to provide support to its customers. “You can set up a remote call without them having to install anything.”

“We are seeing a clear trend of steadily increasing video communication via smartphones. By selling XMReality Business online, we are opening up new opportunities to reach more international companies of various sizes. With this new offering we strengthen our position as an international leader in Remote Guidance,” says Johan Castevall, CEO XMReality.

You can start a free trial today at www.xmreality.com/business/. Apps are available for download in the Apple App Store & Google Play Store.  Read XMReality’s AREA member profile for more information about the company.

XR promises more intuitive and natural ways of interacting with information. In both VR and AR, we can use our hands, gaze, gestures and voice to directly interact with content and manipulate virtual objects, but perhaps we’ve be lead to assume that immersive tech is already usable out of the box.

Today, we consistently find evidence that the UX is still in its infancy and improvements to UX design are not being focused on enough in the immersive technology space. AIXR have covered accessibility issues with UX design recently, check that article out here. 

At Threesixty Reality we have an immersive tech usability lab, where we test a wide range of AR and VR applications with target users. We repeatedly see most users struggle to use these devices effectively, and even mastering the basic controls can take some practice. Let’s not forget that humans have been trained for the last 20 years or so to interact with flat 2D menus on screens, with their finger or with a mouse. The transition to immersive tech isn’t automatic. The interactions are mostly all new and UX design conventions for virtual and augmented reality are just starting to emerge.

Ryan Gerber, Systems-level UX and product design at Vive VR points out: “Even though we’ve begun to see enterprise readily adopt XR solutions, largely due to a quantifiable return on investment, the much more massive market of normal humans is still largely skeptical around this technology’s ease of adoptability.”

In fact a survey of 140 industry professionals in 2018 by global law firm Perkins Coie found the top rated barrier for both VR and AR adoption was poor UX for a second year in a row. Although, in many cases these UX barriers relate to setting up the hardware, we need to also pay attention to the many challenges around how to best design immersive software and new UI paradigms, that are easier to adopt and provide a sense of familiarity as users move from application to application. Vik Parthiban, XR graduate researcher at MIT Media Lab highlights the need to prioritise interaction design for XR, “People underestimate the importance of interaction in AR and VR.”

In the XR industry, we tend to focus a lot on the immersiveness, the compelling 3D world, the sense of presence, low latency tracking that makes you think those are your real hands, the spatial audio, the 3D holograms that seem to obey the laws of physics. In other words, there is a fascination with the potential of the technology and what it can do and less with the step by step journey a human will go through to actually get things done and interact with the system effectively.

This sense of ever improving presence and graphical realise are qualities that make users say “wow!” the first time they experience modern immersive tech, but what we find in user research is that the vast majority of issues occur when the user tries to interact with objects and get the same level of return for their efforts as they would from a usable mobile application. These issues are often quite severe to the point where the user is frustrated and confused and quickly loses the motivation to continue. We hear comments like “I couldn’t get it to do what I was trying to do” or “I could have done this faster on my phone” all the time.

Read the full article on UX Design and Immersive Tech by ThreeSixty here.

“It enables what we call a collective memory across the team,” said CEO and co-founder Paul Battista, a Connecticut native and former U.S. intelligence officer who leads the mostly virtual company from his Farmington home.

With 20 employees, the five-year-old startup has raised $11.6 million in venture capital so far and is growing, with plans to double the size of its team in the next 18 months.

“The biggest challenge right now is scaling and hiring folks,” said Battista. “We have lots of potential use cases but limited resources.”

Battista markets Polarity as AR minus the goggles. It uses computer-vision algorithms and overlays to add data to text that appears on a user’s screen.  It works in two ways: First, users can highlight text on their screen, such as a person’s name, and add a notation, like a brief biography.

Polarity’s algorithms will then recognize those characters and display the note anytime that text appears on their screen, regardless of the application. The notes will also become part of the team’s “collective memory,” making it easier for co-workers to collaborate, Battista said.

“You don’t have to interrupt workflows or send emails asking about updates on things. You’re seeing everybody’s notes in line with the tools you’re already using,” Battista said. In the cybersecurity world — a target market — it can alert analysts to suspicious IP addresses flagged by other team members.

Another feature allows users to pull data from outside sources, bypassing the need for a Google search. For instance, Google Maps could be displayed whenever a street address is recognized, or Standard & Poor’s data could be linked to company names.

For the short term, Battista is concentrating on building his team and growing his customer base, which currently leans heavily toward Fortune 500 companies.

One priority is to make the software more accessible for smaller firms without a dedicated IT department. The company is developing a hosted version of its software that can be used without an on-site server, Battista said.  And while the startup currently has office space through an investor in Washington, D.C., Battista hasn’t ruled out expanding in Connecticut if he finds the right talent here.

“Our mentality is typically to hire the best people, wherever they might be,” he said.

Read the full article on Hartford Business.com

As information technology remakes the modern factory, forward-looking companies are creating virtual worlds to optimize real-world manufacturing. The rewards include improvements in business value and sustainability that would have been almost unimaginable just a few years ago.

Among the most important domains in which data-driven approaches are helping manufacturers boost innovation and performance are innovation and performance are:

1. Digital twin tech and the next gen factory
2. From supply chains to Value networks
3. Cultivating the industry workforce

The article proceeds through each technology in turn and explains how it works.

Digital twins can also guide sustainable manufacturing, letting companies test out different approaches in a virtual environment. That lets them see how they can best eliminate potential waste, whether in inventory, energy use, equipment efficiency or anywhere else.

A digital twin’s most powerful application, however, may be in the design and planning of manufacturing processes and even entire factories. Eric Green, vice president at Dassault Systèmes, cites the case of a company that Dassault Systèmes helped to create a digital model as a starting point for a new plant.

The company realized that it could improve quality and reduce costs by self-manufacturing parts that it had long outsourced. Working with the digital simulacrum, the company simulated different production volumes and flow rates for the parts it wanted to make in-house.

The state-of-the-art plant worked efficiently from day one—the digital twin eliminated the need for a shakedown period. As a bonus, the company now has nearly identical virtual and real environments. This allows managers to more efficiently shift production around various lines.

“They can simulate and optimize for production rates as they grow their business and understand what they need to do before they actually make changes on the factory floor,” says Green. “They’ve now saved a lot of money and become very efficient.”  Read the article in full here.

The example used is via the building of Crossrail.  Crossrail is the new high frequency, high capacity railway for London and the South East in England, UK. When the service opens Crossrail trains will travel from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east via new twin tunnels under central London. It will link Heathrow Airport, the West End, the City of London and Canary Wharf.

Crossrail is set to open by 2021.

Senior Engineer, Ravi Kugananthan, who works for construction giant Laing O’Rourke has traded in his tablet computer to test a pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses.

The full article is available via The Times newspaper.

Image credit – Petr MacDiarmid

From the start, Iristick made the choice to tether the Iristick smart glasses to a smartphone. This combines the best of both worlds: powerful, yet comfortable to wear smart glasses, complemented with the fast-evolving processing power of a smartphone.

Linking the Iristick.Z1 to an iPhone gives companies with a strict iOS company policy the benefits of working with smart glasses for remote assistance, work instruction guidance and pick-by-vision. Iristick smart glasses are now fully compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones.

Why are Iristick the first smart glasses to do so?

Until today, no smart glasses device on the market has been compatible with iOS, making the use case for smart glasses in some industries impossible. The Iristick.Z1 smart glasses are tethered to a smartphone for its processing power, weight distribution and battery requirements, opening up a range of possibilities other smart glasses do not have. These advantages were previously only available for Android phones. Moving forward, it will be possible for the entire range of iOS devices to be tethered with smart glasses.

Why is it so hard to make smart glasses compatible with iOS?

“Traditionally, iOS was a closed system that could only work with external hardware by using very intrusive modifications to the iPhone. Iristick does not require any modification to iOS. The new Iristick framework hides all hardware-level complexity and offers software partners a highly transparent software layer. Creating applications for Iristick becomes standard iPhone application development.” Riemer Grootjans, CTO

Is the market waiting for iOS compatible smart glasses?

In some industries, e.g. pharma, life sciences, space and aero, iPhones and the iOS operating system are IT standards. In those industries, IT departments are reluctant to accept non-Apple devices for multiple reasons (security, deployment cost, …).

This makes working with smart glasses impossible for them, since there are no smart glasses on the market that support Apple phones. At the same time, these are industries where remote assistance and work instructions can significantly improve quality and solve compliance issues. Now, these companies no longer have to compromise by introducing non-standard Android devices. The iOS-Iristick combination solves this dilemma.

What applications are ready for this combination of Iristick smart glasses and iOS?

“Proceedix is a digital platform for enterprise work instruction and inspection execution with mobile and wearable technology. Technicians, operators and inspectors execute their workflow with Android, iOS or Windows tablets and phones. The Proceedix app also runs on assisted reality smart glasses like the Iristick.Z1. For the past 2 years we have leveraged the power of the Iristick.Z1 with an Android phone for hands-free guidance of complex workflow execution. We absolutely welcome the new combination with an iOS device for various customers in Aerospace, Pharma and other process industries.” Peter Verstraeten, CEO Proceedix.

ABOUT IRISTICK  See Iristick AREA member profile 

Founded in 2015, Iristick creates industrial smart safety glasses to support enterprises in their digital transformation. Iristick empowers the deskless operators of the Industry 4.0 future in three domains: remote assistance, digital work instructions and pick-byvision logistics. Iristick smart eyewear is currently being used and tested by customers in maintenance, after-sales support, logistics, shop floor activities, quality control, tele-medicine and education. Iristick, based in Antwerp, Belgium, supports customers globally. Winner of a Red Dot Award, H2020 European Commission Innovation Grant (N°811820) in 2018 and holder of multiple patents. More info: www.iristick.com

ABOUT PROCEEDIX  See Proceedix AREA member profile

Proceedix is a platform to manage enterprise procedures, work instructions and inspections in an easy, digital way. We change the way your deskless workers execute work: anytime, anywhere, on smartphones, tablets and smart glasses. With offices in New York, San Francisco and Ghent, Proceedix helps Fortune 500 companies empower deskless workers around the globe. More info: www.proceedix.com

You can read the full Press Release from Iristick here.

The AREA is not affiliated with the producers of market reports however, many headline findings coming out of these reports will be useful for enterprise buyers, investors, researchers and providers alike who may seek to find a suitable supplier, provider, or to monitor trends in the industry.

The Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market Report helps industry leaders and business decision makers to make assured investment decisions, develop tactical strategies and improve their businesses.

This report presents the worldwide Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market size (value, production and consumption), splits the breakdown (data status 2014-2019 and forecast to 2025), by manufacturers, regions, types and applications.

Manufacturers included in this report include

Google, Microsoft, DAQRI, Psious, Mindmaze, Fristhand Technology, Medical Realities, Atheer, Augmedix, Oculus, CAE Healthcare, Philips, 3D Systems, VirtaMed, HTC< Siemens and Virtually Better.

Organisation Types

On the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare industry share and growth rate for each application, including:

• Hospitals
• Clinics and Surgical Centers
• Research Organizations and Pharma Companies
• Research and Diagnostics Laboratories
• Government and Defense Institutions

Magic Leap’s $2,300 spatial computing platform Magic Leap One may be too expensive for most consumers, but like other early augmented reality devices, enterprise users with bigger pocketbooks are embracing its potential as a business tool.

One particularly promising category is health care, where Magic Leap says it’s now collaborating with at least five different companies to bring its hardware into labs, clinics, and even hospital operating rooms.

On the surgical side, German medical technology company Brainlab is working with Magic Leap on a collaborative 3D spatial viewer for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) content, enabling clinicians to work together when viewing medical images. Brainlab’s software could, for example, let a doctor and radiologist talk through multiple brain scans before a surgical procedure, or enable a surgeon to rely on a heads-up display of scanned while performing a surgical procedure.

Another brain-focused initiative involves SyncThink, a company that uses eye tracking analytics to help diagnose patients’ concussions and balance disorders. Having worked with Magic Leap One for the last year, SyncThink hopes to make it “the gold standard in brain health assessment” by letting doctors use the platform’s collection of sensors to easily determine what wearers are seeing and experiencing.

On the patient side, XRHealth (formerly VRHealth) is working to bring a therapeutic platform called ARHealth to Magic Leap, offering users rehabilitation, pain distraction, psychological assessment, and cognitive training tools. Unlike the prior solutions, which one would use at a doctor’s office, the ARHealth tools will let patients analyze and quantify their own results, then pass the information back to their doctors.

Magic Leap also says that it’s working with the Dan Marino Foundation on a tool to help young adults with autism spectrum disorder practice for in-person job interviews, and creating a virtual person-based medical training application for the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. The company expects to leverage its partnership with AT&T to incorporate 5G, AI, and edge computing into future Magic Leap-based medical solutions, enabling low-latency collaboration and co-presence, among other benefits.