In this interview published on TechRepublic, Alberto Torres, CEO of AREA Member Atheer Labs, shares his vision for use of 3D Augmented Reality for enterprise and professional uses. Torres also compares 3D AR with Google Glass, explaining the smart glasses product category will begin in enterprise and, only have having been proven productive in business and the costs reduced, will it find favor in mass market.
Petropars, an Iranian oil company, announced this week that it has introduced 3D Augmented Reality experiences for use by workers in the South Pars gas field phase 12. This announcement published in English on the Shana web site, which is covering news, trends and other developments during the 20th Oil Exhibition in Tehran, and claims to be the first of its kind.
A new report published by consultancy McKinsey & Company, entitled “Industry 4.0 – How to Navigate a Changing Industrial Landscape,” describes the role of ubiquitous sensors and new data analytics. The report predicts that there will be a 30-55 percent drop in knowledge work (healthcare, IT, legal, finance) between 2010 and 2020. Those workers who remain will need to perform specialized and undocumented tasks. These will be supported through remote experts and with Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality will frequently be used in settings where the user cannot hold a tablet or smartphone while performing a complex task. In this article in InformationWeek, smart glasses are named as one of three disruptive technologies destined to transform the industrial workforce, alongside artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. This analysis provides insights on how these three technologies are part of several trends leveraging new smaller, lighter and less power-consuming components.
In this feature article published on Float Learning, an information service for mobile learning professionals, the author describes the skills that developers will need to master when they begin to tackle experience development for use with personal hands-free and head-mounted displays. The author calls out that the developer will have to better detect the user’s focus of attention with which AR experiences will be based, to provide the user with new ways to interact (without a keyboard and mouse) and achieve their objectives, and that, unlike the displays for which people have been trained to deliver content upon, the world is inherently three dimensional, introducing new concepts such as depth sensing and occlusion.
An Australian software start up conducted an interview with Startup88.com about a new application that sources information about workplace risk from on-line databases and local conditions then makes employees more aware of their conditions using Augmented Reality. The Safety Compass is targeting construction sites, process plants (such as petroleum, oil & gas) and energy/infrastructure clients.
This New York Times feature article describes the strong support that the HoloLens project has received from Microsoft’s CEO. Despite his sharp cost-cutting programs, Satya Nadella has said that creating a new product category, such as Augmented Reality-ready personal displays, is definitely where new investments belong. Nadella also wants the group working on HoloLens to be fully integrated into Microsoft which means collaborating with Microsoft engineering teams that furnish complementary systems cloud services and Skype for collaboration.
Boeing’s CIO Ted Colbert is fully in support of the continued growth of Augmented Reality projects under his watch. The AREA sponsor member is expanding the scope and investment it is making into the technology not only in manufacturing but also in training and maintenance operations. This feature article in InformationWeek explains how the company seeks to advance despite the current technology limitations.
Juniper Research predicts that the enterprise Augmented Reality software market will grow 10 fold between 2014 and 2019. The company’s press release revealed that analysts feel the opportunities for enterprises to improve the bottom line will drive introduction of mobile AR services and licenses. Contracted services for bespoke projects and hardware are not included in the company’s forecast so the total opportunity size is significantly larger than the report’s scope.
The author of this post on EBN OnLine describes how distribution center or manufacturing floor supervisors and employee jobs will be changing with the use of Augmented Reality. The article has many use cases including training, packing and machinery maintenance. It is valuable for this type of article to appear in a vertical market publication so that those new to Augmented Reality can learn of the practical applications in their field.