Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today outlined its overarching vision of the wearables space while highlighting several significant Snapdragon Wear™ Platform milestones. In a press event, Qualcomm Technologies discussed its growing platform investments and announced the new Qualcomm® Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program. The company also announced that more than 60 wearable industry leaders such as Arm, BBK, Fossil, Oppo, Verizon, Vodafone, and Zebra will participate in the program.

Rapid Wearables Growth as Industry Segments

The Wearables segment has been growing and segmenting at a rapid pace with products targeted for kids, teens, adults, and seniors across consumer and enterprise use cases.

“The wearables market grew 21% year-over-year and shows no signs of slowing down,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Research Manager, WW Mobile Device Trackers, IDC. “Innovative form factors continue to emerge as consumers demand new use cases in wearable devices. The smartwatch segment is going well beyond health and fitness tracking, expanding across consumer and enterprise segments, and further fueling growth of the category.”

Qualcomm Technologies’ Increasing Snapdragon Wear Investments

“Our Snapdragon Wear platforms are driving the industry, powering smartwatches for kids, seniors, and adults and smart trackers for pets and accessories,” said Pankaj Kedia, senior director & global head, smart wearables, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We are significantly growing our investments in leading edge ground-up silicon, platforms, and technologies and plan to roll out new Snapdragon Wear platforms across segments over the next year to meet our long-term vision.”

Qualcomm Technologies is continuing to invest in new Snapdragon Wear platforms to meet the diverse needs of customers across a multitude of OSs with its unique hybrid architectural approach, range of software releases, and reference designs. “We envision a hyper segmented world of wearables,” Kedia continued, “we believe Qualcomm Technologies has an important role to play to accelerate this reality by bringing together our platforms and investments to the ecosystem.”

Over the last five years, the company has shipped 40+ million units across 100+ countries, collaborated with 75+ device manufacturers and 25+ service providers while shipping 250+ wearables products – that is one new product, on average, per week.

Announcing the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program

The wearables segment holds considerable promise but also presents daunting challenges to be addressed in the industry. To facilitate collaboration amongst companies and accelerate solutions to these challenges, Qualcomm Technologies launched the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program which is comprised of device manufacturers (ODMs), service providers, platform players, independent hardware and software vendors (IHVs and ISVs), and system integrators and will work together with OEMs to more easily develop and commercialize products and solutions.

The program brings together industry leaders to discuss industry trends, share new technology and product direction, hold training sessions, demonstrate concepts, launch products, and facilitate matchmaking sessions amongst the ecosystem players. The collective goal of the members is to accelerate the wearables segment by delivering differentiated experiences at lower development cost and faster production time.

“Qualcomm Technologies is actively collaborating with its customers and partners with the aim of meeting the ever-changing needs of the consumers,” added Kedia. “We are delighted to announce the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program today and have an ambitious set of activities planned. Our goal is to provide a vehicle in the industry where ecosystem members collaborate to deliver differentiated wearable experiences and inject new energy and innovation in this exciting space.”

“The wearables market continues to evolve across a range of form factors and use cases which require efficient performance for complex and immersive experiences,” said Ketan Shah, senior director of XR and wearables, Client Line of Business, Arm. “Arm is focused on providing the compute performance and security needed to enable next-generation wearable devices, and through the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program, we will work closely with the wider ecosystem to drive collaboration and change across the industry.”

“At Fossil Group, we are always striving for new innovation and increased performance in our products. Thanks to our continued partnership with Qualcomm and the launch of our upcoming smartwatches later this year, Fossil believes it’s bringing the best possible Wear OS smartwatch to the market this year,” said Chris Hartley, Director of Category Strategy – Wearables, Fossil Group, Inc.

“Verizon has been committed to growing the wearables industry, introduced various wearable products to help customers stay connected” said Farhana Chaudhry, Director of Product Management and Development at Verizon. “We are excited to see the launch of the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program, opportunity to collaborate with the broad ecosystem partners to continue to innovate and launch the diverse and innovative wearables products.”

“Vodafone is proud to participate in Qualcomm’s Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator programme, and its initiative to drive greater use and functionality of wearable consumer devices. Wearables are a part of the fabric of the next generation of telecommunications and will only be successful by combining the efforts of industry innovators in connectivity, semiconductors, hardware and user experience design. This combined effort will lead to innovations for consumers, such as Vodafone OneNumber, which enables wearable devices to connect without even needing a mobile phone,” said Phil Patel, Global Products & Services Director, Vodafone Group Services GmbH.

“Zebra Technologies has a long history of delivering innovative wearable solutions to meet the evolving needs of our Enterprise customers,” said Julie Johnson, vice president of product management, Zebra Technologies. “As we continue to work with our customers in established and emerging use cases, we look forward to working with Qualcomm Technologies.”

The Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program is part of the Qualcomm® Advantage Network and is open to companies developing solutions based on the Snapdragon Wear platforms. The inaugural Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Summit will be held in Fall 2021.

The Executive Summary reads:

The time has come for a change of pace. The global face of XR in healthcare is evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in the use of XR in healthcare as providers are forced to accelerate their digital transformation journeys and adopt novel and innovative solutions to navigate the impact of the pandemic. A unique opportunity presents itself for the UK to lead this expanding market.

AR and VR have been revolutionising the global healthcare market and demonstrating impact, value and efficiencies for some time before the pandemic struck. The predicted growth of the AR healthcare market is expected to generate US$10 billion in revenues, with the VR Healthcare market reaching US$1.2 billion in 2024 (ABI Research Oct 7th, 2020). In the UK use-at-home market, The Times reported in January 2021 that the sales of VR headsets had risen by 350% as those trapped at home seek a safe way to escape the lockdown. At the start of last year, one in 17 UK households had a VR headset at home, according to Ofcom, up from one in 20 in 2018.

There is a nascent but world-class XR innovation emerging in the UK’s healthcare market, as cutting-edge research is undertaken in UK universities and ground-breaking innovation is happening in start-ups and SMEs. In addition, novel collaborations and trials are demonstrating the potential value and cost savings to be gained from the application of XR in healthcare and the impact on and improvement to people’s lives. Despite the market potential for the UK, the evidence generated is not being measured efficiently and the benefits, although becoming clearer, are not being valued to the extent needed to trigger the funding, investment and strategic interventions needed to grow a sustainable and thriving UK XR healthcare sector.

One of the biggest drivers within the NHS is to provide value for money. The health economics in this report emphasises the potential that XR offers in supporting healthcare services to deliver highly effective outcomes in a more cost-effective way. XR can be used to help patients face operations and treatments that they would otherwise avoid, this could lead to £2 million of possible savings per year. Delivering therapies remotely via VR can be 2-3 times cheaper than traditional rehabilitation, cut wait times, improve engagement and reduce the likelihood of symptoms exacerbating. Finally, XR can reduce costs to training, and improve overall surgical performance by as much as 230% versus traditional training methods. This evidence is a fundamental requirement for the health system and it is unlikely any XR solution can be adopted into clinical practice or attract the investment needed to scale without the data to support its effectiveness.

Research and development of XR is hampered by a fragmented ecosystem and the lack of opportunities for cross-sector collaboration. Pockets of innovation sit in industry, isolated from the clinicians or researchers needed to turn ideas into reality. There is, as yet, no marketplace for efficiently distributing XR in healthcare solutions. It is extremely difficult for products or experiences to convert into clinical trials to substantiate the value and impact. It is even harder to get in front of commissioners, procurers or purchasers.  Funded and market-ready solutions struggle to find a route to market, as, in order to get onto a procurement platform, XR solutions have to meet standards and assurances which currently are not fit for purpose for the unique applications of XR.

The aim of this report is to outline what we mean by XR in healthcare and how it is being implemented in the UK. It identifies the potential value of XR, explores the evidence that demonstrates its impact on human health and estimates the potential cost savings to the UK healthcare system. The report delves into use cases of XR in healthcare across a number of key application areas, including mental health and wellbeing, physiotherapy and rehabilitation, pain management, healthcare professional clinical skills training and patient education. Our goal is to showcase the people and projects innovating in this space and to demonstrate the potential value XR could bring to clinical and non-clinical settings. The report also highlights the unique collaborations emerging on the clinical front line, bringing clinicians, academics, gaming and XR companies and others together to address real needs within the health system.

More importantly, this report brings together for the first time a snapshot of XR in healthcare in the UK today, outlines the barriers to its growth and makes recommendations that will help government and public health services make informed decisions on future strategies. This will ensure the UK is in the best position to unlock the potential of XR in healthcare and ultimately improve patient outcomes and quality of life.

You can read all the sections online here. 

The topics included in this interview are:

1. About Aggreko
2. Current role at Aggreko
3. AR pilot
4. Pre-pandemic challenges to adopting AR
5. Change management
6. Creating digital content
7. How COVID-19 impacted Aggreko’s operations
8. XR replacing what needs to get certified
9. The role AR played in Aggreko’s going remote during the pandemic
10. How AR enabled certain remote tasks and activities

You can access the full interview here. 

This technology makes it possible to superimpose a computer-generated image, graphic or 3D model on the surface of the real product, providing customers with assistance that allows them to better understand the received instructions.

What you can hear when AR technology is mentioned is the improvement of remote assistance or even the training of the workforce. Now another use of this technology comes in the form of AR manuals. Manuals of different products have always been of special importance especially because they are delivered immediately to customers, avoiding the various questions and problems that may be encountered for a particular product or service.

In fact, in the time we live in, where technology prevails in every aspect of life, we can freely say that these traditional manuals are going out of trends also because of the difficulty in understanding them. Ultimately, this technology is bringing a powerful wave of change in conveying the information we need in real time and in a more simplified way. All this is already achieved thanks to these AR based manuals which provide information in detail about the operation and maintenance of a specific product.

The article goes on to detail how technology is enabling this effective way of delivering manuals to customers by replacing traditional printed manuals with multiple texts and in most cases incomprehensible.

Both machine operators and John Deere executive team members are smiling, as the wearable hands-free devices are poised to save the company a great deal of time and money in the long-term.

How Vuzix M400 Smart Glasses improve life for John Deere machine operators:

Hands-free communication

Construction sites aren’t ideal for talking on smartphones. Hands-free and voice-controlled, Smart Glasses allow users to conduct video calls without distraction. Conversation partners are displayed in the corner of a team member’s field-of-view meaning they can still monitor their surroundings while reporting to supervisors. This innovation will save lives.

Real-time reporting

Instead of describing mechanical problems to off-site colleagues, operators can broadcast their first-person view directly to supervisors. They can also report on the status of machinery in real-time with a simple tap of the device’s touchpad. Talk about making the entire process more seamless…

Next gen training

New operators will benefit from the ability to broadcast whatever they’re looking at to off-site supervisors. The next best thing to having an instructor over your shoulder, this development has proven a gamechanger for many Vuzix partners throughout the global pandemic.

Read the full article here.

As the world continues to adjust to more virtual ways of working, industrial organizations are turning to digital technologies to stay connected, productive, and resilient. With out-of-the box solutions that deliver rapid ROI, industrial augmented reality (AR) overcomes thorny workforce challenges, speeds up on-the-job learning, and creates opportunities for employees to collaborate—even at a distance.

This eBook gathers actionable tips from five experts who are using industrial AR to drive innovation and improve how frontline workforces get things done in today’s new normal. Each of these experts was asked to respond to the same question: In today’s climate, what is the most important consideration for somebody ready to empower their employees with Augmented Reality?

With expert opinions from

• Shawn Metivier, General Manager Reliability, BID Group
• AndrewE. Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO, RealWear
• Chrsitian Radillo, Global technical Consultant for extended reality, Rockwell Azutomation
• Matt Kwiatkowski, Global Learning Strategy & Technology Program Leader,, GE Healthcare

You can view all the advice and opinions from the experts on Industrial AR and XR in the PTC ebook.

Critical infrastructures (CRITIS) such as the chemical storage terminal of Attilio Carmagnani are of central importance to our modern society. Very high demands are placed on their operational security as failures or impairments of CRITIS can have serious consequences. For example, terrorist or drone attacks on assets of the chemical sector could pose severe risks to public health and safety.

However, maintaining the operational safety of these infrastructures presents a challenge. Due to cyber-physical threats critical infrastructures are exposed to an increasing potential of danger and keeping up with security issues has become more difficult in the last years.

About EU Horizon 2020: InfraStress

The Horizon 2020 project InfraStress has taken on this challenge and aims to create protection in the form of innovative technology. A consortium of 27 partners from 11 countries started to work on developed methods to improve the cyber-physical security and developed an open testbed stress-testing system. Augmented reality training is one part of InfraStress’ set of measures.

“By using augmented reality and smart glasses, we work on a better assessment of these critical and industrial environments. Via AR operators and workers can be trained, how to clamp down on cyber-physical threats and hazards,” states Alexander Werlberger, CTO at Holo-Light. “The collaboration with our partners Attilio Carmagnani and STAM was very enriching: we learned a lot from each other and created a very customized solution for industrial requirements.”

Emergency Training with Augmented Reality

Situational awareness is crucial in case of emergency. Every action must be right. With AR personnel can be trained through real-time simulations. It prepares team members to make critical decisions on the spot and to have realistic experiences without endangering anyone.

Irene Bonetti, Terminal Director of Attilio Carmagnani affirms: “During training we have to imagine fire or liquids. With the AR training solution on HoloLens 2 we can really see it and understand how the chemicals will behave. Also, the fact that AR trainings can be executed one-by-one multiple times helps us to prepare in a better way.”

Conclusion

As governments and enterprises see the potential of improving disaster response skills with augmented reality, analysts expect a rise of AR training solutions in the public sector. Also, the increased roll-out of 5G networks will have a positive influence on its further spread. Ultra-high bandwidths and low latency as well as the increasing deployment and acceptance of cloud and edge computing will power digital transformation through XR (an umbrella term for all immersive technologies).

Founded in 2019 by Amy LaMeyer and Martina Welkhoff, WXR bills itself as “the only venture firm at the intersection of the next wave of computing and female founders.” Its portfolio includes companies such as shoppable virtual store platform Obsess, and Wavely, a Seattle startup developing a smartphone app for ear infections.

“We started WXR Fund to establish a beacon for underrepresented founders in this growing XR community,” Welkhoff said in a statement.

Welkhoff is a Seattle startup vet, having founding companies including Zealyst and ConveneVR. LaMeyer is based in San Francisco and previously spent more than 15 years at Akamai.

WXR previously hosted an accelerator before launching its fund, accepting 26 startups across two cohorts.

Even as venture capital firms invested a record amount of cash in startups last year, funding to female-led and mixed-gender founding teams fell to 14.4% from 16.9%, according to AllRaise.

Qualcomm has unveiled its latest research milestones and innovations for advancing the next chapter of 5G, and they looks likely to transform industries worldwide. The company’s new and updated R&D over-the-air (OTA) testbeds and system simulations are enhancing the 5G system foundation to bring even more capacity, wider coverage, and lower latency to mobile operators and devices on a global scale. The testbeds and system simulations also highlight 5G’s horizontal capabilities to transform a wide range of industries from industrial IoT, automotive, enterprise, and more.

“Qualcomm Technologies is committed to driving the mobile ecosystem forward by breaking technology barriers and bringing superior 5G system performance to new industries, use cases and experiences for the smartphone and beyond,” said John Smee, vice president, engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Our new 5G R&D technology OTA testbeds and system simulations build on more than 30 years of deep wireless technology expertise, end-to-end system knowledge, global experience, and exemplify our leadership in advancing 5G for the next decade,” Smee continued.

Strengthening wide-area 5G system foundation

The latest wide-area 5G OTA test networks, prototypes, and system simulations announced by Qualcomm illustrate new capabilities and efficiencies of the 5G system. The latest demonstrations are focused across five key wide-area 5G research topics including subband half-duplex, wide-area 5G positioning, cross-node machine learning, 5G NR-Light evolution with sidelink, and 5G device disaggregation.

Expanding mobile mmWave deployments

New mmWave OTA prototypes and system simulations have been announced by Qualcomm, a pioneer in mmWave technology, and are exemplified in five key areas. These are smart mmWave repeaters, machine learning-based beam prediction, network topology optimisation, mmWave IoT expansion, and mmWave in smart factories.The company’s demos  showcase how 5G mmWave is evolving to support even better performance, deployment efficiency and expanded use.

Smarter transportation with 5G V2X sidelink

Qualcomm’s automotive vision for 5G V2X (vehicle-to-everything) is to bring increased road safety by connecting cars to other cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, road infrastructure and more. Their new 5G Rel-16 aligned R&D prototype further drives the 5G V2X sidelink evolution for delivering enhanced network capacity by offloading high-bandwidth data such as local high-res 3D maps from wide-area 5G networks, as well as bringing more robust communication with distributed time synchronisation to maintain communication even when GNSS is unavailable.

Enabling new Industry 4.0 efficiencies

The 5G over-the-air industrial test beds from Qualcomm illustrate key features pushing the boundaries of 5G technology, which sets the foundation for Industry 4.0. Advanced technologies showcased by Qualcomm are time sensitive networking (TSN) with micro-second level time synchronisation, ultra-high reliability with coordinated multi-point (CoMP), indoor precise positioning with centimetre level accuracy, and the novel introduction of sidelink to industrial IoT for more efficient device-to-device communication.

Boundless XR over 5G mobile mmWave

Using their optimised end-to-end 5G mmWave OTA system, Qualcomm showcases efficient simultaneous support of multiple virtual reality users across diverse applications, such as workplace collaboration and gaming. This will drive the convergence of physical, digital, and virtual worlds, boundless XR ushers in more immersive mobile virtual and augmented reality experiences through 5G and distributed computing.

Better system efficiencies for greener networks

With mobile networks growing to support wider bandwidths, denser deployments, and more users, Qualcomm’s researchers are also pursuing greener networks. This includes new advanced techniques, such as digital post distortion and high-efficiency modulation schemes that can greatly reduce the energy consumption of a mobile network system while sustaining high performance data links.

Qualcomm Technologies’ latest research shows the growth of new 5G phones, deployments, and applications across wireless technology, edge cloud processing, and AI. Indeed, the company’s new prototypes underscore Qualcomm’s commitment to ongoing research and development of future 5G technologies and beyond.

Read Qualcomm’s AREA

New vendors have entered the market with many of the established companies offering their platforms and solutions at a reduced cost or for free. The increase in vendors has been especially focused in Remote Expert (See-What-I-See) video sharing capabilities for onsite equipment failure and maintenance issue resolution support.

This article talks through the Key drivers for the use of AR include and how the AEC industry is rapidly adopting digital transformation technologies, such as AR.

Digital Construction Works (DCW) is implementing solutions such as Bentley Systems Synchro XR Hololens applications to forge a path in immersive 4D simulations for on-site for construction planning and virtualized inspections of pre-scanned 3D photogrammetry models of telecommunication towers or bridges for safe maintenance reviews.

But how can the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) industry and their clients further embrace the promise of AR technologies particularly during the construction and commissioning phases to leverage their investments as part of an asset lifecycle digital twin strategy?

The article goes on to look at the status quote including remote experts and guided workflow as well as offering a case study example.

The full article can be read here.