Ships regularly undergo large-scale retrofits, but shipowners rarely have design data in digital form at hand. To design ship modifications, an engineering accuracy of the as-built ship geometry is required, which means each vessel must be 3D laser-scanned. ShipReality, a company specialised in AR/VR ship design automation and remote ops, synthesises these large ship laser scans with its CAD software to design directly in 3D, resulting in merged models of CAD in the as-built ship geometry point clouds.

“We want to speed up and optimise retrofit designs for 60,000 ships that require greenhouse gas emissions reduction, energy conversions & ballast water treatment system (BWTS) retrofits in the coming years”, said Georgios Bourtzos, CEO and co-founder of ShipReality. “A major challenge we faced designing directly in large point clouds was visualising entire vessels layered with resulting 3D designs for immersive design reviews on mobile XR devices like Oculus Quest 2 and HoloLens 2.”

Exploring the use of point clouds in AR

Point clouds are precise models of real environments based on 3D laser or photogrammetry scanning. Objects and space are represented in the form of “points”. Millions of such points combined formulate a point cloud scan. The scan is then imported into a 3D modeling platform with the purpose of creating an as-built model. Common CAD software used for ship designs, although incorporating 3D laser scans, still rely on 2D projections and screens to visualise and design in 3D. This often results in incompatibilities with the existing ship geometry, which are only realised during installation, creating substantial delays and high additional costs.

Visualisation in 3D is a key issue to address these problems. However, visualising large point clouds requires substantial CPU and graphics power. The performance requirements are simply too high for rendering it locally on a mobile XR device. It would cause an extremely low frame rate and even software crashes. Dealing with large datasets, ShipReality had to find a solution that could surpass the limited memory, CPU and GPU resources of mobile devices.

XR streaming solution that supports point cloud

XR streaming technology outsources the rendering process to a local server or the cloud. But not every solution on the market supports ultra large data or point clouds. “We integrated the ISAR SDK into our solution to stream large 3D laser scans merged with CAD retrofit designs to a HoloLens 2,” said Mr Bourtzos. ISAR (Interactive Streaming for Augmented Reality) is a unique remote rendering software component that allows to stream entire augmented and virtual reality applications in real time. “The simplicity and ease of integration of the software development kit worked seamlessly with our large models.”

Integrating ISAR into their engine and software, ShipReality was able to visualise a massive model containing more than one billion points. Layered on top was also BWTS CAD design data created by the company’s ShipMR-design software with additional five million polygons. To compare, a mobile XR device could only render about one and half million polygons locally. As the remote rendering server ShipReality used a moderate gaming laptop and the local WiFi, broadcasting on 2.4GHz band. More performance and bandwidth enable even greater visualisations.

Next level immersive experiences

“ISAR has amazing potential for AR/VR visualisation of massive digital twins and real-time monitoring of projected complex 3D designs merged with as-built environments in shipping and other industries,” said Mr Bourtzos. ShipReality is now able to:

• visualise ship models that are only suited for high-performance processing
• capture large assets 1:1 and integrate complex 3D CAD designs/data
• visualise detailed models for spatial analytics in augmented reality

“ISAR can save us a lot of time and resources because we can directly use point clouds in mobile AR: some pre-processing steps can be avoided.”

Data availability, accuracy, density, and size of 3D point clouds are also forecast to vastly increase within the next years. “To realise the full potential of immersive point cloud experiences, streaming will play a major role,” concluded Georgios Bourtzos.

The mixed reality, computer aided design (CAD) 3D visualization tool is known as ProtoSpace. It has been crucial to the lab’s collaborative development of spacecraft, says the technical lead for ProtoSpace, Benjamin Nuernberger.

Nuernberger, a mixed reality researcher and developer who guides the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL’s) related software architecture design and implementation, explains that ProtoSpace allows scientists to see 3D CAD models of the spacecraft through augmented reality. To use ProtoSpace, researchers employ the Microsoft HoloLens, a commercial off-the-shelf mixed reality head-mounted display device combined with the JPL’s augmented reality application to superimpose a 3D digital image into the real world—as opposed to a virtual reality environment that creates an entire digital world.

“ProtoSpace has been used for various stages of the mission life cycle, all the way from the stage where you have an initial CAD design and you want to communicate that design to other people, to the early design stage and trying to figure out the design decisions, then to find the optimal design and to validate those designs, and for planning and troubleshooting,” Nuernberger notes.

“It’s really great because all the different scientists and engineers can collaborate and see this spacecraft spatially, stereoscopically, floating in a conference room, or maybe overlaid onto the actual hardware in a clean room. It allows them to talk about it as if it was physically there.”

In February, NASA deployed Perseverance to Mars for two Earth years to search for signs of ancient life, collect rock and soil samples, demonstrate technology and advance the possibility of human exploration on the planet. In April and May, NASA conducted several successful demonstration flights of Ingenuity, first verifying that powered, controlled flight was even possible on the Red Planet, and later testing how aerial reconnaissance and other tasks could aid in the exploration of Mars.

Read the full article here

LifecycleIQ Services provide the transformative partnership that customers need and expect today. By combining digital technologies with expansive human know-how, the services help companies work faster, smarter and with greater agility at every point in their business cycle. The services can help companies realize the power of a Connected Enterprise during the design, operations, and maintenance stages in greenfield and brownfield facilities.

“LifecycleIQ Services create a more intimate customer engagement model, one that can help companies not only solve problems, but also see new possibilities in production and transform them into reality,” said Frank Kulaszewicz, senior vice president, Lifecycle Services at Rockwell Automation. “We’re investing in providing a wide range of holistic services to help companies be more productive, safe and secure anywhere in a product, process or plant lifecycle.”

Inbavanan Rathinam, senior director, Solutions & Services, Asia-Pacific at Rockwell Automation, said: “One challenge faced by many industrial players in Asia-Pacific is how to adopt smart manufacturing technology quickly whilst seamlessly integrating legacy equipment and machinery. LifeCycleIQ Services help to address this unmet need holistically, enabling enterprises to be future-ready by incorporating agility and flexibility in both infrastructure and processes.

“Driving efficiencies also continues to be increasingly important to businesses across every sector in the region, with growing attention on sustainable operations. LifeCycleIQ Services enables our customers to better plan and service every aspect of the plant, from design to safe operations, enabling reduced energy usage, minimized wastage, and maximized output.”

Industrial companies can use LifecycleIQ Services to achieve outcomes like:

Capturing more value from digital transformation initiatives

Digital initiatives can struggle to get off the ground because companies don’t know what steps to take or where to start. Using the knowledge and experience within LifecycleIQ Services, companies can strategically plan, implement and scale their digital initiatives.

Support can begin with defining strategic objectives, identifying use cases and quantifying business value. Rockwell Automation can then continue to support customers through implementation, ongoing maintenance and continuous innovation.

Reducing risk with comprehensive cybersecurity support

Cybersecurity is a top priority today, but few companies have specialists with both information and operations technology (IT/OT) security knowledge. Rockwell Automation is uniquely equipped to address complex security challenges in IT/OT environments. The company understands the OT environment and how it interfaces with IT and follows industry security standards.

LifecycleIQ Services can help companies adopt a proactive cybersecurity approach and address the entire attack continuum — before, during and after an event. Also, as more companies connect their plants to remote workers and partners like original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Rockwell Automation can help protect those connections with secure remote access and security posture assessment services.

Improving workforce support

Companies need new ways to support their workforces as they contend with global health challenges and skills shortages brought on by the retirement of trained workers and an influx of new technologies. They also need workforce support as they seek to make the most of IIoT technologies.

LifecycleIQ Services can help companies address their unique workforce challenges and gaps by assessing needs, identifying priorities and creating workforce development programs. Rockwell Automation also uses remote support capabilities and augmented reality technologies to help companies interact virtually with support engineers, strengthen skills with virtual training, and provide safety and security services without sending people into plants.

To improve customer experiences, LifecycleIQ Services is also introducing a new way to receive multiple services in one contract. An Integrated Service Agreement allows companies to select a package of offerings to simplify their support needs and have just one number to call to access experts and receive priority service. Companies can get 24×7 technical support, repair services, reports and analytics, field services and more, all in one integrated contract.

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), is a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. We connect the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more productive and more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockwell Automation employs approximately 24,000 problem solvers dedicated to our customers in more than 100 countries. To learn more about how we are bringing the Connected Enterprise to life across industrial enterprises, visit www.rockwellautomation.com.

Members joined during May 2021

Keen Research

Keen Research develops SDKs for on-device automatic speech recognition for devices running iOS, Android, Linux, or ChromeOS operating systems. The SDK uses a state-of-the-art speech recognition engine based on Deep Neural Networks at its core, and it includes a variety of acoustic models. – CEO, Ognjen Todic

Insider Navigation

A Vienna-based large-scale Augmented Reality company, founded in 2014, is the first company to offer AR-based indoor positioning for industrial solutions, which has been operationally in use for years.  Among the well-known customers are Volkswagen, Ford, JLL, Magna Steyr and many more. CSO, Lena Miglbauer

DoX Systems

DoX Systems is a Finnish software company founded in 1991 who develop retail systems that aid with technical documentation and related processes. Their current customers consist of large-scale enterprises and SMEs in Nordic countries. Sales, Tommi Tolvanen

Members joined earlier in 2021

Rockwell Automation

Looking to see how we can help our Clients – Member since Apr 2021 – Director of Digital Technology Office which includes all Industry 4.0 technologies. Director – Global Information Solutions Technical Consultants, Andrew Ellis

Xennial Digital

Xennial Digital is an XR company focused on immersive learning for enterprise and educational clients. CEO | CXO, Douglas Fajardo

Holo-Light

Holo-Light specializes in immersive software and technologies for the enterprise market. The company has developed a unique remote rendering SDK, ISAR, that allows users to stream entire big data XR applications in real time. Holo-Light also provides ARES Pro, a powerful XR software, enabling engineers to work and collaborate on 3D CAD data. Chief Marketing Officer – Co-Founder, Luis Bollinger

Augmented Reality Engineering FZE

We create Extended Reality experiences. We provide intuitive digital solutions to your tough problems. Covering industries from the workforce to academia. CEO, Akram Amir

INFRASI

“We simplify enterprise mobility with cost-effective, cloud-enabled and modern IT infrastructure solutions. By embracing and adopting this technology, your company becomes increasingly agile and effective, digitally transforming your business for maximum results.” CEO, Doyin Adewodu

Siemens DI SW

“Amid unprecedented change and the rapid pace of innovation, digitalization is no longer tomorrow’s idea. We take what the future promises tomorrow and make it real for our customers today. Welcome to… Where today meets tomorrow”.  Product Management Visualization, Ian Fisher.

The contents of this comprehensive guide are as follows:

1. What is augmented reality?
2. Benefits of augmented reality in education
3. Augmented reality in education examples
4. Augmented reality in higher education
5. Augmented reality apps for education

Benefits of AR

AR can have a significant impact on learning environments:

• Student engagement and interest: Student interest skyrockets with the opportunity to engage in creating educational content. AR technologies can allow them to add to curriculum content, create virtual worlds, and explore new interests.
• Learning environment: Classes that incorporate AR can help students become more involved. An interactive learning environment provides opportunities to implement hands-on learning approaches that can increase engagement, enhance the learning experience, and get students to learn and practice new skills.
• Content understanding: Lack of quality content focused on education, rather than entertainment, is a noted concern among teachers hesitant to use augmented reality in education. However, existing AR technology enables teachers to create immersive educational experiences on their own to help ensure their students understand curriculum content.
• Collaboration: As AR content is digital, it is easily shared. For example, a group of teachers can work with their students to continually refine the content. A collaborative learning environment provides students with increased motivation to learn because they are actively engaged in the educational content creation process.
• Memory: AR is an excellent tool for bringing lessons to life and helping students remember essential details. For example, instead of just presenting photographs on a projector showcasing life in Colonial America, a teacher can use AR technology to create memorable interactive stories.

Read the full resource here 

• According to the report, the hands-free, voice-controlled devices provide on-site automotive technicians instant access to Ford expert advice no matter where their dealership is located.
• RealWear assisted reality solutions have enabled automotive technicians in South Africa to perform complex and difficult repairs faster and more accurately than ever before.
• Ford is using the solution to cut the expense of sending experts to every far-flung location in their dealership network.
• The devices have also enabled Ford to boost customer satisfaction by reducing wait-times and ensuring vehicles are repaired correctly the first time.
• Ford will expand their use of RealWear’s headsets to more remote dealerships in South Africa – as well as to other locations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ford’s Announcement Says it Gained Business Benefits From the RealWear HMT-1 Hands-Free Deployment

According to the article, global innovation leader Ford Motor Company has gained a series of business benefits after introducing RealWear HMT-1 assisted reality devices in their South African dealerships. Ford had previously rolled out RealWear’s solution in parts of Australia and Europe.

List of Benefits Provided

Ford is enjoying many benefits throughout their South African Dealerships. These include:

• The ability for remote technicians to gain real-time access to Ford experts so they can complete difficult repairs faster, easier and more accurately than ever.
• The ability to eliminate vehicle repair bottlenecks cause by the delays in on-site expertise.
• The ability to significantly reduce the enormous expense of sending vehicle repair experts to far-flung remote locations.
• The ability to boost customer satisfaction by repairing vehicles correctly the first time – and reducing customer vehicle downtime.

Ford says its employees have been very happy with RealWear’s solution.

Read the full article here. 

See RealWear’s AREA member profile here. 

With increased language support, and the platform and hardware independence in place, we enable companies globally to scale XMReality even broader. The new language support functionality makes it easier to add more languages whenever needed. The combination of guidance features and multiple languages help our customers and partners to bridge language barriers and become even more efficient in expanding into their markets.

Smarter communication and less barriers allows for faster, more secure ability to help people all over the world, meeting a diverse audience. It will also make it easier for workers to reach out for help when both the caller and the recipient can view the app in their own language. Those who resell XMReality Remote Guidance as a part of their offer, will experience less friction in both packaging and marketing of the solution.

XMReality is now available in:

Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Spanish.

Read more about this and other updates here Latest Updates 

XMReality AREA member profile 

The way we work is changing. While businesses tackle the challenges of increasingly competitive markets, the workforce needs to constantly adapt to new tools, changing processes and different work environments.

Emerging technology is transforming the industrial workplace. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) improve automation, data driven insights and operational efficiency. However, the technology that holds the most potential for creating our future workplace is Augmented Reality (AR).

RE’FLEKT explores the future of the industrial workplace and the role of Work Augmentation and Remote Collaboration based on AR technology. We take a close look at how businesses will work tomorrow by connecting their workforce with information and knowledge today – using Enterprise Augmented Reality.

The guide is comprehensive and comes in a number of sections:

• How enterprise AR tackles business challenges
• The digital AR guide
• Manufacturing in the remote economy age
• AR devices

You can read the full article here 

Knee+ is a patented platform designed to assist orthopedic surgeons to perform surgeries better and faster by providing real-time positioning of instruments, directly in their field of view. Knee+ is intuitive and requires minimal training even for those who have never utilized navigation or robots since it does not change the overall technique for 90% of surgeons who use a conventional technique. Knee+ consists of proprietary software using unique computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms and running on connected Vuzix M400 Smart Glasses, with no bulky capital equipment or disposables required. The solution is simple, accurate and much less expensive than surgical assistance robots.

The United States represents 50% of the worldwide market for knee replacement surgeries, and according to estimates there are more than 30,000 orthopedic surgeons in the U.S who carry out approximately 600,000 total knee replacements annually. Pixee Medical plans to start surgeries as soon as possible in the US with Digitally Augmented Surgeons to prove the efficiency of its breakthrough, affordable, and efficient solution, especially adapted for the growing surgery vertical of ambulatory surgical centers.

“The FDA’s clearance of Knee+ is an important step forward and we plan to quickly expand our platform to perform hip and shoulder replacements,” states Sébastien Henry, Founder and CEO of Pixee Medical. “In addition, our platform is designed to become the cornerstone of data acquisition and exchange during surgery as well as a plug-and-play hub for accessories like connected instruments, robotic arms and wireless tools. Vuzix’ M400 Smart Glasses play a vital role within our Knee+ solution.”

“We are thrilled to see Pixee Medical receive FDA clearance for Knee+ and we look forward to supporting the worldwide distribution of their innovative AR solution, particularly now in the U.S. market, which accounts roughly half of the world’s annual knee surgeries,” said Paul Travers, President and Chief Executive Officer at Vuzix. “The Vuzix M400 Smart Glasses are lightweight, comfortable and completely wireless and their high-performance camera is ideal for reading QR-code markers and precisely calculating the 3D coordinates of the instruments used during Knee+ surgeries.”

The project will initially use Vuforia Studio technology to overlay live data – taken from the ThingWorx® industrial platform – to various points of the facility, so that operators moving around will be able to make informed decisions on changes to casting and melting lines or troubleshoot issues before they happen.

It is anticipated that Augmented Reality will make it easier for staff to hae the right information at exactly the right point they need it, whilst the use of HoloLens and RealWear glasses will mean the individual has both hands free to complete tasks.

This project will contribute to the sector’s longer-term desire to move towards a net zero steel works by 2050 and is part of the £22m PRISM steel and metals sector research and innovation programme being delivered by the Materials Processing Institute with funding provided through Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation.

“The successful implementation of digital technologies has the potential to save tens of £millions every year,” explained Chris Oswin, Group Manager of Digital Technologies at the Materials Processing Institute.

“We are taking responsibility for exploring IIoT platforms and AR and working out how we can get the most out of them in a live steel plant, learning from testing and trials to identify best use cases.”

He continued: “This means we absorb a lot of the time and remove the initial expenditure that could act as a barrier to entry for companies in our industry, hopefully encouraging digital adoption as we will have proved it works and how it can be applied to businesses.

“PRISM is guided by a team of industry leaders on our Industrial Advisory Board, including the Aluminium Federation, British Manufacturing Plant Constructors’ Association, British Steel, Celsa Steel, Liberty Steel, Outokumpu Stainless Steel, Sheffield Forgemasters, Swansea University, Tata Steel and the UK Metals Council.”

The Materials Processing Institute has a long-term relationship with PTC, with the latest project following on from the introduction of ThingWorx as part of the £10m programme to explore how digital technologies can be implemented in brownfield manufacturing sites.

In addition to optimising processes and introducing new efficiency improvements, Augmented Reality will also be used to capture some of the traditional skills in the sector that could be lost if the knowledge of older workers is not retained before they retire.

This will be achieved by using PTC’s Vuforia ® software, with Vuforia Expert Capture allowing operators and technicians to film their daily tasks in step-by-step instructions, in situ of when and where they do their work.

This will be uploaded to ‘the Cloud’, which can then be accessed by new starters or people switching roles, using HoloLens or RealWear to get a real hands-on experience, or other devices such as mobiles, tablets or on desktop computers.

Furthermore, for problem resolution and live ‘on the job’ support, there is Vuforia Chalk. Using mobile devices, digital eyewear or seated at a desk – experts can connect with on and off-site employees and customers and collaborate in real-time. It combines live video, audio and the ability for remote and local participants to annotate their live shared view and mark-up the real-world environment.

“If we don’t act soon, we stand to lose so much knowledge from the industry and AR gives us a cost effective and easy way to retain skills and experience in a virtual library for generations to come,” added Chris.

“Working closely with PTC’s experts, we can tailor how we capture information, footage and skills in what is a very demanding and intense environment. We believe we’ve got the initial framework to start the roll-out and will continue to adapt the processes as we understand more about how digital technologies can play a role.”

David Grammer, general manager for UKI for PTC, went on to add: “Covid-19 has definitely thrust the digital thread into the spotlight, but there is still a resistance to adoption due to a lack of awareness of how it will deliver a genuine business benefit.

“This project with the Materials Processing Institute gives an entire sector the opportunity to explore how AR can be applied and developed in a real live steel plant without the potential disruption and cost of trying it in their own facilities.

“Businesses will be involved in the roll-out and informing some of the test cases and our team will be on hand to support experts at the Institute to get the most out of our technology and software.

“The end goal is that we will have proven business cases on how steel and metals companies can optimise processes using Augmented Reality and live data, not to mention protecting vital skills for the steel workers of the future.”

PTC, which has bases in the UK and Ireland, provides a host of technology solutions to help industrial companies create value for themselves and the rest of the world.

This is achieved through a combination of Augmented Reality, Industrial IoT, Product Lifecycle Management and CAD solutions.