Through new features such as augmented reality, expanded validation tools, model-based definition and 2D Nesting, Solid Edge 2020 provides next generation technologies to enhance collaboration and fully digitalize the design-to-manufacturing process.

“Sharing designs in AR/VR with Solid Edge 2020 could change how we do almost everything. It’s an absolute game changer and will help us design better, while communicating more effectively and efficiently with our customers and engineers,” said Stefan Islinger, Information Management, IM-CAD Support for Krones AG.

Solid Edge 2020 delivers new augmented reality capabilities that enable users to visualize design intent in new ways, enabling enhanced collaboration internally, as well as with suppliers and customers during the design process. New and powerful validation tools have been integrated for conducting motion and vibration simulation, which can help customers reduce costly prototypes.

“The latest enhancements to the Solid Edge portfolio can help small to medium-sized manufacturers digitalize their entire product development process from end-to end,” said John Miller, Sr. Vice President, Mainstream Engineering at Siemens Digital Industries Software. “We continue to work on providing an advanced portfolio of affordable and easy-to-use tools to help our customers with their digital transformation, so they can reduce costs and accelerate product delivery.”

Further reading:

The full press release

Information about Solid Edge

Next Reality’s take on the news

In support of the initiative, SeeDaten has made an in-kind donation in excess of $100,000. The funds will support the provision of reality, augmented reality and mixed reality software specifically in the area of automotive manufacturing. These tools aim to help bridge the manufacturing skills gap that could leave as many as 2 million jobs unfilled by 2025.

“We are proud to support the next generation of engineering talent at Clemson University by providing advanced tools to enhance their learning and comprehension levels,” said Philip Riddle, president, CEO and founder of SeeDaten Inc. “By working with the students and faculty at CU-ICAR, we hope to better equip future leaders and help industry reduce the manufacturing skills gap. Our goal is to develop this into a model for collaborative learning and explore opportunities for technological advancement.”

Activities related to the initiative will primarily take place in Clemson’s Vehicle Assembly Center in Greenville, where researchers, students and manufacturers are already working side by side to explore advanced manufacturing techniques and develop supporting prototypes under Laine Mears, the center’s founding director and BMW SmartState Chair in Automotive Manufacturing at the university.

“The changing landscape in manufacturing calls for new and innovative approaches to providing the workforce of tomorrow with the skills needed to succeed,” said Mears. “Collaborations with industry innovators such as SeeDaten allow us to easily demonstrate tools that transfer knowledge to build skills more efficiently and effectively than with traditional methods. This better leverages the digital technologies commonly applied in automated processes to benefit the human element of manufacturing.”

Rapidly changing conditions and processes in manufacturing environments mean workforces need quickly and efficiently delivered information and training, and training implementors need a rapid way to create easily understandable materials. By leveraging flexible and engaging augmented reality technologies, industry can dramatically improve learning and performance outcomes.

“SeeDaten’s generous gift of ioxp augmented reality software is enabling our students to get hands-on experience with advanced augmented reality (AR) and worker support systems that have the potential to change how the South Carolina workforce interacts with Industry 4.0 manufacturing systems,” said Matthew Krugh, one of the Clemson graduate research assistants working with the software. “Empowered through this technology, we can better understand the abilities of current and future commercial AR systems and learn foundational skills that are required for the success of digital manufacturing in South Carolina.”

Graduate students at CU-ICAR will also use the software to support tool and safety training for Clemson’s Deep Orange program.

“As manufacturing and systems become more complex, implementing advanced training tools is crucial to prepare our students for success in industry,” said Chris Paredis, BMW Endowed Chair in Automotive Systems Integration and Deep Orange program director. “Collaborating with companies such as SeeDaten helps us accelerate that process.”

Read: Original Source article.

A number of firms have already adopted the emerging technology – which could help to potentially avert oil spills – including Chevron, British Petroleum (BP) and Baker Hughes, among many others.

In 2010, an explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig resulted in some 210 million gallons of oil and 225,000 tons of methane spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, leading to a massive ecological disaster that caused untold damage to marine life and surrounding areas.

Since then, oil firms have adopted AR headsets and glasses, which superimpose digital images on what the wearer sees in real life to fix problems on rigs, refineries and plants. The technology transmits information in real-time to experts located anywhere in the world, who can then respond with instructions and guidance to a technician on-site.

BP relies on “smart glasses” that use a software platform developed by the Israeli company Fieldbit, whose technology is used by field service technicians via interactive AR-based glasses, mobile devices and web browsers.

“Our software enables field service personnel in remote locations to collaborate with off-site experts and management in real time via smart eyeglasses, smart phones, mobile devices and web browsers,” Evyatar Meiron, CEO of Fieldbit, told The Media Line, adding that a number of businesses had already adopted the company’s software, including BP, Emerson, Enel, and Honeywell.

Meiron said the technology helps these companies “get their personnel in the field the right information at the right time, whether it’s finding a location quickly among acres of oil wells or accessing specifications for well pressures and temperatures.”

He further noted that Fieldbit is working with a number of sectors aside from oil and gas, including the printing, manufacturing and medical industries.

Due to the high costs of flying out specialists to the far-flung places where plants and rigs are often located – which can reach tens of thousands of dollars – a number of other tech outfits have also begun providing similar AR solutions.  General Electric, for instance, has equipped some workers with “Smart Helmet,” a hard hat with a video camera and a Bluetooth-enabled headset that was created by the Italian company VRMedia. The Sweden-based XMReality also offers a similar AR-based solution.

Eric Abbruzzese, a research director at the U.S.-based ABI Research firm, which specializes in AR and virtual reality (VR), told The Media Line by email that these emerging technologies are proving popular because remote expertise is especially sought after in the oil and gas sector.

“Being able to connect with an expert (assuming there’s connectivity) to walk through a procedure/task when a worker needs it is incredibly valuable,” Abbruzzese stressed. “Just the time and cost savings for not having to have an expert travel to a site is significant.”

According to Abbruzzese, among the specific tasks that benefit the most from AR are digital documentation, 3D model viewing and step-by-step instructions.

“With more advanced AR solutions like Microsoft HoloLens, instruction can be directly overlaid on the environment as a worker goes about a task, with rich visualization for content when available,” he specified. “One can even be trained in parallel with accomplishing a task (in situ training), meaning trainee ramp up can theoretically be instant.”

In addition to training personnel, the same technology can lead to error reduction and also prevent oil spills, Abbruzzese continued. Nevertheless, because it is such a new technology, AR has so far only been implemented on a small scale and mostly with pilot phases.

“Outside of oil and gas, implementation is more significant,” Abbruzzese explained. “While there is objective value to AR usage, those difficulties with implementation can be significant barriers. The time and money required to get an oil rig and its workers outfitted and ready with advanced augmented reality is daunting; lower cost and simpler AR headsets, like Google Glass and RealWear, are more appealing today for this reason, capitalizing on some high value use cases (step-by-step instruction, remote expertise).”

The firm’s background is discussed including its industrial IoT platform. CEO Jim Heppelmann said that one factor in its success was to PTC’s long-standing focus in shrinking the gap between the digital and physical worlds. Its logo, representing a digital and physical hand coming together, hints at this intersection, which serves as a foundation for its IoT focus.

“PTC started with the digital definition of things through CAD and PLM tools,” reads part of a corporate presentation on the company. It continues: “This digital definition is converted into the physical things around us. Today, those physical things generate digital information that can be captured and analyzed by the IoT.”

The company also has a unique vantage point when it comes to augmented reality, Heppelmann said. “If you really want to do AR, you need to know 3D. That’s our heritage. And you need IoT because you need data about the physical world,” he explained. “And then you need to understand the shape of the physical world.”

Other than ThingWorx, part of the company’s IoT offerings is KEPServerEX, a connectivity platform used in more than 75,000 sites. The software offers support for an array of industrial devices while also offering the ability to convert legacy insecure communication protocols with secure protocols as well as support for SSL and TLS.

In terms of augmented reality, the company recently bolstered its offerings with the Vuforia Expert Capture AR technology. Designed to help industrial companies quickly create training guides and SOP manuals, the Expert Capture system enables a skilled worker to repair or assemble a piece of machinery while documenting every step in the process so others can follow in that expert’s footsteps.

The problem Expert Capture aims to solve is capturing knowledge from industrial veterans. Many industrial sectors are wrestling with an aging workforce. In the United States, the average age of a worker in manufacturing was 44 in 2018. “There’s lots of people retiring,” said Mike Campbell, executive vice president, augmented reality products at PTC. “They’re taking all their tribal knowledge out of the workforce with them. Some of our customers are really in a crisis mode where they’re trying to figure out how do we maintain that knowledge.”

The problem drove PTC to develop the Expert Capture system, which works in three phases. “The first phase is about capturing the expertise. So you basically put a set of digital eyewear on your experts, and then they do their job,” Campbell said. The experts can carry out a task hands-free and common on critical steps. “They’re recording video and taking pictures along the way,” Campbell said. “The second phase is enhancing that expertise.” in this step, after performing a series of physical steps and capturing it via digital eyewear, the worker can fine-tune the structure of the digital materials the Expert Capture system creates. The third step is sharing the expertise of experienced workers with less-experienced employees. After publishing, the instructions are available on a variety of devices.

In terms of digital eyewear, the system supports Microsoft HoloLens as well as the forthcoming HoloLens 2. It also supports the RealWear HMT-1 head-mounted Android computer that can be attached to a hard hat.

Users viewing instructions gathered by the system can use the aforementioned systems as well as access the information on smartphones and tablets. “Some of our customers were saying: ‘Boy, I’d like to just have a piece of documentation.’ So we output to that as well,” Campbell said. No matter what the option, the system can improve the accuracy and speed in which workers perform new or unfamiliar tasks.

One of PTC’s customers, Global Foundries, was able to reduce the time to document standard operating procedures by up to tenfold while curbing employee training time by half by using the Vuforia Expert Capture system in a trial.

The wide support is indicative of PTC’s ethos that prioritizes ecosystems over individual technologies. “There is a broad waterfront of AR capabilities that are required, and we are addressing that entire waterfront with many different options across all of those different vectors,” Campbell said. “That’s why I think people choose PTC because we’ve got all of those options available.”

The article next takes a closer look at use-cases and benefits, and how understanding the driving factors and industry trends helps plant managers weigh the pros and cons of investing in mobile and wearable technology.  Nine examples are then given of the ever-expanding use cases for wearable technology and mobile applications continue to expand. Here are nine examples of when and where these technologies provide major benefits:

1. Role-based Workbenches and Dashboards. Modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions often contain role-based workbenches and dashboards to help personnel manage their own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ongoing responsibilities—whether that be maintaining safety stock levels, monitoring resources committed to Engineer-to-Order orders, or optimizing supply chain deliveries for just-in-time strategies. However, these tools only work if they can be used when and where the user needs them. That could be on the shop floor, in the warehouse or at the loading dock. Therefore, remote access through mobile or handheld devices is essential.
2. Empowering Always-alert Executives. Top managers of business units and the shop floor are often vigilant watchdogs. They want to stay connected 24/7 to real-time status alerts, especially when the plant runs three shifts or has global operations in different time zones. Portals for remote access for personnel and partners are increasingly important, as global operations, “work from home” and outsourcing business models are more widely adopted.
3. Internet of Things (IoT) Data Where it Counts. Manufacturers are increasingly embedding sensors in machinery and capturing performance and maintenance-related data points through IoT technology. It is logical that maintenance managers and technicians should have access to the data near the machine. As the user approaches the piece of equipment, a real-time diagnostic view of the machinery and its components can appear on a hand-held device. The screen can highlight key performance stats and red-flag any anomalies requiring attention, giving the technician the vitals needed to perform any necessary maintenance or repairs quickly.
4. Training and Onboarding. As the shortage of skilled workers continues to plague manufacturing, often less experienced, junior-level candidates are brought on board, requiring extensive in-plant training. The complexity and high value of machine assets make plant managers reluctant to assign inexperienced technicians to perform maintenance on those assets. Augmented Reality (AR) can be used for training, giving users the chance to visualize machine issues and “practice” engaging with the high-tech tools and repair tactics. This gives new recruits valuable experience.
5. Supervising Remote Workers. Video cameras mounted on hard-hats can also be used to support junior-level technicians in the field. The video can be streamed to a central locale, where a veteran technician provides advice and supervises activities remotely. This helps the new technician learn the “tribal knowledge” and speeds resolutions.
6. Faster Resolution Rates.Whether field service technicians are dispatched to customer sites or in-plant to perform maintenance or service, the timely access to asset details — like service history, inventory of replacement parts, the status of warranties or service agreements, and previous resolutions—will help technicians make well-informed decisions about repair versus replace.
7. Upsell and Replacement Opportunities.Field technicians with access to account information and inventory details will be able to make in-field recommendations to customers and sell replacement or up-sell equipment on the spot — when the purchase decision is critical. Technicians, seen as trusted advisors, tend to have very high close-rates for on-site sales.
8. Tracking and Monitoring Personnel.Some plants can be massive, covering many buildings, yards, and warehouses. Assets can range from pipelines and rail lines to rooftop exhaust scrubbers and barges for hauling raw resources. That said, personnel can be scattered over a wide vicinity. Some locations may also pose dangers. Wearables, like vests equipped with GPS tracking, can be used to help monitor the location of employees, supporting safety and security, as well as encouraging productivity.
9. Speed Pick-and-Pack in the Warehouse. Warehouse functions are some of the most relevant and valuable applications of wearable devices. Wrist-mounted, glasses-view, or dashboard-displayed screens help forklift drivers to find and fulfill orders quickly. The loading and unloading trucks also appreciate the ability to confirm order numbers verbally rather than trying to type long series of digits accurately.

“To increase profit margins, we need to ship more wafers at lower cost, so we are looked at every part of our process and developed an integrated AI and AR/VR strategy,” said D.P. Prakash, who leads implementation of the augmented/virtual reality project that he claims is a year ahead of his competition.

In early May, GlobalFoundries gave 10 workers AR glasses from Realwear to provide 2D displays of documentation inside the fab. The foundry has identified 30 use cases for the application developed by PTC using its Vuforia platform acquired from Qualcomm in 2015.

“Jobs that used to take two weeks or even two months could now take a couple of days,” said Prakash.

GlobalFoundries  identified four applications for AR, with training the next one slated for deployment, followed by operations. In a proof-of-concept pilot, the foundry determined that AR could slash training time by 30% to 50%.

“Ten headsets is a great start, and we will scale that it will be more than 50 for [accessing] documentation — ordering 200 headsets out of the gate is not a smart solution,” said Arpad Hevizi, chief information officer at GlobalFoundries.

“Once we have the training app, the project will scale to more than 100 headsets because our front-end technicians are under very high demand. The training process is measured in weeks, and they need to be in the clean room, so there is significant turnover that we can reduce.”

Use of headsets for system operators is still in a proof-of-concept stage. If all goes well, GlobalFoundries will deploy hundreds of headsets for them.

RealWear Inc, PTC and Qualcomm mentioned in the article are all AREA members.

Description of Bosch’s CAP

Using augmented reality, Bosch has developed new training methods that can, for example, be used to train workshop employees for complex systems. The training can be carried out on physical or virtual vehicles. Whether it be smartphone, tablet or data glasses, it is possible to use any mobile device and also combine it with others.

This is made possible by the Bosch Common Augmented Reality Platform (CAP): software that brings AR content and applications into the industrial sector. Fed with locally or centrally stored contents, the platform compiles the required data for each specific AR application. This allows different training scenarios to be implemented.

Jury statement on the award

Workshop staff are increasingly having to deal with complex vehicle technologies such as electric vehicles and assistance systems. This flood of knowledge can no longer be faithfully conveyed through conventional training techniques.

The Common Augmented Reality Platform was specially developed for training in the automotive segment and highlights complex correlations and functions in a simple, transparent way. A modern training tool that is neatly executed in didactic terms too, and which is likely to be a feature of any workshop in ten years’ time.

Information reproduced from source article about the winners.

The latest edition of PTC’s bi-annual report explores how augmented reality solutions are being leveraged to reduce tracking time and costs to bridge the worker skill gap.

PTC research finds industrial enterprises are the highest adopters of AR solutions and are seeing dramatic results in driving worker efficiency and quality, while lowering costs.

The report includes actionable insights on use cases and beneficiaries, as well as detailed real-world examples.

The report authors are: Mike Campbell, EVP, Augmented Reality Products Shawn Kelly, VP, Corporate Strategy Jonathan Lang, Lead Principal Business Analyst David Immerman, Business Analyst.

The full report can be downloaded here 

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“Someday augmented reality will become a mainstream feature of ordinary eyeglasses and sunglasses for everyday, general-purpose consumer use. But that day is many years in the future.

Reading the news, it’s easy to conclude that consumer smart glasses are on the brink of becoming available.

Apple is famously toiling away on future iGlasses. A recently published “continuation patent” (which is a patent that the company wants the Patent Office to keep examining to change the scope of the original patent) describes what Apple calls “data glasses” capable of integrating virtual content with the real world, including for StreetView-style turn-by-turn directions and other location-based applications.

The patent office recently published several new smart glasses patents for Apple. One reveals new technology Apple is working on for holographic display of objects in glasses.

Facebook’s “Reality Labs” has been working on augmented reality glasses for a few years. A patent filed this week by Facebook describes a “cartilage conduction audio system for eyewear devices” that would project sound into the ear without blocking ambient sounds.

And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was spotted this month visiting the headquarters of Luxottica, which is a global eyeglass giant known to be interested in partnering with smart glasses makers.

These projects by Apple and Facebook won’t ship as consumer products for many years. The technology simply isn’t ready.

The article (in full here) explores why smart glasses are a non starter for consumers, citing 5 reasons:

1. They are socially unacceptable (interesting discussion on technical features and use cases in enterprise)
2. Solve business problems not consumer problems. Companies mentioned include Boeing, DHL, Airbus, medicine are all discussed.
3. Often need tethering. Many new enterprise and business products have to be tethered to a computer that’s more powerful than puny ones that can be comfortably attached to the wearer’s head.
4. Don’t have all day battery life
5. Are too expensive

The author remarks he was happy to see some of that potential as the show at the Santa Clara Convention Center was bigger than ever. Enterprises are beginning to adopt and embrace these technologies, as I saw with Volvo’s investment in AR/VR headset maker Varjo.

Takahashi met with Jim Heppelmann, CEO of PTC, the provider of the AR platform Vuforia, at AWE. He said his company’s AR revenues are about 7% of the total, and it’s growing about 90 percent a year, thanks to enterprise AR adoption for things like training and field work. That growth rate is enough to deliver 6% growth per year to the larger corporation, and it is enough to keep investing in AR.

If big companies like PTC and their big customers in the enterprise carry the torch, then we will see a market for things like Varjo’s amazing XR-1 AR technology, which the company is trying to polish so that an AR headset can be worn while driving a car. The resolution of the headset displays is much better than what is in the market today in the form of Oculus or HTC Vive VR headsets. It has two 12-megapixel cameras that can create images with a resolution of more than 4K per eye.

An enterprise might pay something like $6,000 for this kind of tech. But you can’t sell it to consumers until it costs $300. It takes a lot of spins of Moore’s Law to get to that lower cost.

A lot of companies are pivoting right now, leaving the consumer AR and VR markets and moving into enterprise, location-based entertainment, and the health, education, and industrial markets.

Once you have the graphics, you need the haptics (the sense of touch), said Nicole Lazzaro, head of XEO Design and a VR game designer.

Further comments and the full article can be read here.