The AR Cloud, ruggedized hardware, and a consumer-friendly app
ecosystem. Could 2019 be the year this technology breaks out of the
novelty phase?
Augmented Reality is still pretty lame. Sorry, I know that’s a broad
brush to paint an increasingly diverse technology category, but that’s
my professional opinion.
On the enterprise side, AR is finally showing some indications of becoming genuinely useful, particularly in sectors like field service, but adoption has been uneven. On the consumer side, it’s pretty much all face swaps and cheesy marketing “experiences” crafted for brands conned by marketing teams into thinking they’re in danger of missing a phantom wave of mixed reality adoption.
But if AR is still sputtering, it’s equally true the category has
tremendous potential and is bound to change the way we interact with and
interpret our world.
To get some insight on how and where AR will progress in 2019, I reached out to Scott Montgomerie, co-founder and CEO of Scope AR, a company that crafts enterprise AR solutions for various industries. Here are three areas where we can expect significant leaps forward in 2019.
HARDWARE WILL BECOME MORE RUGGEDIZED
There’s a big barrier inhibiting AR adoption right now: Many of the
sectors that could most benefit from AR require workers to go into
demanding environments that are brutal on hardware.
“While more and more companies are using AR glasses or headsets,”
says Montgomerie, “they are still fragile and expensive. As such, users
are hesitant to bring them to high risk environments, such as a
construction site or an oil rig, where they could easily get broken.”
That should change in 2019. Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 is expected to launch, likely adding durability to one of the most popular enterprise headsets. More than 75 percent of respondents in Digi-Capital’s Augmented/Virtual Reality Report pointed to Microsoft HoloLens as the smartglasses platform that matters most to their company.
Several other companies, including Apple, are working on AR devices
as well, and it’s a sure bet they’re eyeing use cases that will require a
measure of durability.
PROGRESS AROUND THE AR CLOUD WILL LEAD TO A NEW LEVEL OF COLLABORATION
Some definitions are in order. The AR Cloud is a digital copy of the real world that’s accessible to everyone, and it’s going to be really important. How important?
“The AR Cloud will be the single most important software
infrastructure in computing, far more valuable than Facebook’s social
graph or Google’s pagerank index,” says Augmented World Expo Founder and CEO Ori Inbar.
That statement makes sense if you can envision a future in which
digital information about people, objects, and places will be derived
not from Googling them using text but from training a camera at them.
When a publicly accessible digital copy of the real world is complete,
training an AR device at just about anything will yield a wealth of
information.
There’s a race underway now to control the AR Cloud. Google, which
has paved the way with its Street View efforts, is firmly in the lead,
but there’s been a groundswell of activity in the area.
“The progress being made on the AR Cloud will unlock a new set of use
cases and allow co-workers (or consumers) to communicate in an
unprecedented way that’s more precise and location-specific,”
Montgomerie told me. “Several startups who are working solely on AR
Cloud development came out of stealth mode this year.”
Because an AR Cloud will be interoperable and available to everyone,
it promotes multiplayer AR experiences. Two people working on an oil rig
can access complementary technical and sensor data in real time, for
instance, aiding enterprise collaboration. Two consumers will be able to
enjoy the same AR experience on different devices, bringing a social
aspect to a technology that’s been single player so far.
2019 IS THE YEAR IN WHICH WE’LL SEE THE LAUNCH OF THE INDUSTRY’S FIRST PRACTICAL CONSUMER APPLICATIONS
Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore debuted
in the second half of 2017. That timing is important, because it means
developers and startups have now had enough time to get their feet wet
with the technology and gauge market response to begin producing
meaningful consumer apps.
“About a year and a half after the original Apple App store launched,
developers finally learned how to leverage a touch screen to build
engaging and useful user interfaces, and app development exploded,”
explains Montgomerie. “AR app development requires a whole new way of
thinking. Much like the iPhone’s user experience required a transition
from mouse-and-keyboard interaction to touch, AR experiences require a
new method of interaction.”
Fortunately, Montgomerie believes developers are and consumers alike
are becoming fluent in these new modes of technology interaction.
“We’re starting to see the signs that mobile AR is following the same growth trajectory as mobile apps.”
If that’s true, expect the technology to finally escape the doldrums of face swaps and tacky brand promotions in the year ahead.
XR Talks is a weekly series that features the best presentations and educational videos from the XR universe. It includes embedded video, as well as narrative analysis and top takeaways. Speakers’ opinions are their own.
Enterprise AR is a rich area of opportunity, given continually-proven
bottom line impact. In fact, it’s the largest XR sub-sector in the
outer years of ARtillry Intelligence’s latest revenue forecast. That’s mostly driven by demonstrable ROI in areas like industrial productivity and error reduction.
But despite that ROI story, there’s still lots of enterprise inertia and risk aversion, said Scope AR CEO Scott Montgomerie at AWE Europe (video below). We believe it will
take a while to get over that hump, but then adoption will accelerate as
we saw with enterprise smartphone adoption.
To accelerate that process, it’s all about case studies and proof
points. It’s also about moving enterprises past “pilot purgatory” says
Montgomerie. That happens when innovation centers in a given company
adopt technology but other constituents, like I.T. dept. and employees,
don’t.
But it still starts with the case studies. And those are slowly building throughout the enterprise AR sector. Scope AR has been an exemplar in pulling together ROI proof points, including increased output, better accuracy rate in diagnosing problems, and reducing time for task completion.
For example, Scope AR’s WorkLink software for pre-authored AR instructions reduced Lockheed Martin’s “orient & decide” portion of a satellite assembly by 99 percent. This type of work is where AR shines, as it reduces the cognitive load that’s inherent in translating 2D manuals to 3D space.
“To put into common terms, think about IKEA furniture,” said
Montgomerie. “You have to look at those paper instructions, read weird
diagrams, and do mental mapping of those diagrams… Multiply the
complexity of that by a thousand and that’s the challenge we’re facing.”
Beyond pre-authored AR instructions, remote AR assistance (a.k.a “see what I see”) is proving valuable. Fast-food equipment supplier Prince Castle used Scope AR’s Remote AR to fix on-site equipment. It achieved 100 percent first time diagnosis rate and a 50 percent labor cost reduction.
“There’s about thirty things that can go wrong with these pieces of
equipment,” said Montgomerie. “Figuring out which one of those things
have gone wrong is really the key, and just with a phone call, their
diagnosis rate was terrible — about 90 percent failure in first-time
Diagnosis.”
As we’ve examined,
Remote AR can also have macro-effects in an organization, such as
reducing impact from subject-matter experts retiring. Shifting them from
field work to remote AR assistance can delay retirement. It can also
optimize diminishing volumes of experts through telepresence.
“In the next five years, they’re going to lose 330 years worth of
experience just by having baby boomers retiring,” said Montgomerie.
“These guys have spent 35 years learning exactly how to maintain, fix
and operate equipment, and that knowledge is literally walking out the
door.”
Unilever realized this advantage, as well as the unit economics of lessened downtime. Using Remote AR, it was able to reduce downtime by 50 percent for an ROI of 1,717 percent. The benefit is having things fixed faster when you don’t have to wait for a human to travel to the site.
But again, ROI proof points only get you so far. It’s also about
setting the technology up to succeed by appealing to stakeholders
throughout an organization — business leaders, I.T. depts. and
employees, says Montgomerie. And that’s more about marketing than
technology.
Business leaders are the easy part, and are usually sold on the
merits of case studies like the above. Then comes I.T., whose job is to
be risk-averse. Montgomerie’s advice: Get them involved as soon as
possible. That may seem counterintuitive but it pays dividends
downstream.
“I think it’s a common mistake — one we’ve certainly made — to do an
end run around I.T.,” said Montgomerie. “It’s easy to say ‘yeah, let’s
prove the value first and then we’ll worry about I.T. when we get to
scale. I.T. will screw you at that point, so you need to get them in the
conversation early.”
He also recommends deploying AR through smartphones and tablets when
possible. The I.T. and data security pushback is lower with mobile
devices, given their tenure and trustworthiness in the enterprise.
Headsets like the Hololens conversely haven’t gained that level trust
from I.T. yet.
As for employees, it’s likewise hard to win them over. But successful
deployment requires their buy in. Resistance includes fear of new
technology and job security. Montgomerie recommends educating them on
how it benefits them, and enlist change-management pros.
“We’re talking about some pretty impressive ROI numbers here,” he
said. “If I’m a worker I’m thinking, ‘oh well, the company can still do
exactly the same on their bottom line with 50 percent of the workforce…
does that mean I have a 1 in 2 chance of keeping my job next year’.”
In a broader sense, Montgomerie recommends deploying AR where it works
best. It doesn’t work in rote and automated functions, where employees
are already fine-tuned. It shines in low-volume, high complexity
situations (like space shuttles), or high volume, small improvement
scenarios.
Put another way, don’t be a hammer searching for nails.
Act in a needs-driven way to deploy AR in targeted and optimized ways.
Scope AR took this path with aerospace, engineering and heavy equipment,
but Montgomerie believes there are many other verticals primed for AR.
“I think there’s an impression out there that AR is great for everything. I can tell you it’s not,” he said. “We’ve chosen key industries to go after… there are other industries where this is a greenfield — things like medical, construction, and logistics. There are some great use cases there.”
Lockheed Martin engineers wear the goggles to help them assemble the
crew capsule Orion—without having to read thousands of pages of paper
instructions.
When you work at a factory that pumps out thousands of a single item,
like iPhones or shoes, you quickly become an expert in the assembly
process. But when you are making something like a spacecraft, that
comfort level doesn’t come quite so easily.
“Just about every time, we are building something for the first
time,” says Brian O’Connor, the vice president of production operations
at Lockheed Martin Space.
Traditionally, aerospace organizations have replied upon thousand-page paper manuals to relay instructions to their workers. In recent years, firms like Boeing and Airbus have started experimenting with augmented reality, but it’s rarely progressed beyond the testing phase. At Lockheed, at least, that’s changing. The firm’s employees are now using AR to do their jobs every single day.
Spacecraft technician Decker Jory uses a Microsoft HoloLens headset on a daily basis for his work on Orion, the spacecraft intended to one day sit atop the powerful—and repeatedly delayed—NASA Space Launch System. “At the start of the day, I put on the device to get accustomed to what we will be doing in the morning,” says Jory. He takes the headset off when he is ready to start drilling. For now, the longest he can wear it without it getting uncomfortable or too heavy is about three hours. So he and his team of assemblers use it to learn a task or check the directions in 15-minute increments rather than for a constant feed of instructions.
In the headset, the workers can see holograms displaying models that
are created through engineering design software from Scope AR. Models of
parts and labels are overlaid on already assembled pieces of
spacecraft. Information like torquing instructions—how to twist
things—can be displayed right on top of the holes to which they are
relevant, and workers can see what the finished product will look like.
The virtual models around the workers are even color-coded to the
role of the person using the headset. For Jory’s team, which is
currently constructing the heat shield skeleton of Orion, the new
technology takes the place of a 1,500-page binder full of written work
instructions.
Lockheed is expanding its use of augmented reality after seeing some
dramatic effects during testing. Technicians needed far less time to get
familiar with and prepare for a new task or to understand and perform
processes like drilling holes and twisting fasteners.
These results are prompting the organization to expand its ambitions
for the headsets: one day it hopes to use them in space. Lockheed
Martin’s head of emerging technologies, Shelley Peterson, says the way
workers use the headsets back here on Earth gives insight into how
augmented reality could help astronauts maintain the spacecraft the firm
helped build. “What we want astronauts to be able to do is have
maintenance capability that’s much more intuitive than going through
text or drawing content,” says Peterson.
For now, these headsets still need some adjustments to increase their
wearability and ease of use before they can be used in space. Creating
the content the workers see is getting easier, but it still takes a lot
of effort. O’Connor sees these as obstacles that can be overcome
quickly, though.
“If you were to look five years down the road, I don’t think you will
find an efficient manufacturing operation that doesn’t have this type
of augmented reality to assist the operators,” he says.
Almost everyone’s heard something about the promise of augmented
reality (AR). Next-generation video game action. The future of
interactive movies. Or blockbuster AR investments from heavy-hitters
like Facebook, promising a new way that we’ll connect and interact.
Is this exciting? Absolutely. But there’s more to AR than
hype or novelty. Smart companies are already using AR to redefine how
they get work done and train employees. Aerospace leader Lockheed-Martin is using AR to improve manufacturing efficiency and accuracy of complex spacecraft. Prince Castle uses an AR-based remote assistance tool so
on-site workers at fast food chains can connect with an expert service
technician in real-time to troubleshoot and repair kitchen equipment
more quickly and accurately.
Enterprise AR is not the future. It’s here. A recent Harvard Business Review study found 68 percent of enterprise executives they surveyed believe that AR
is “important to achieving their companies’ strategic goals in the next
18 months.”
But here’s the catch: The same survey showed that just 32
percent of these executives believe that their senior management
understand the technology and understand the potential benefits it can
bring to their company. It’s time to change some minds.
Are you interested in test-driving AR applications in your
company, but concerned your leadership might not be convinced they’re
ready to adopt — or have the budget for it? Here are three ways to make
the case for enterprise AR at your company.
1. Dream big with AR — but start small Build a practical AR project that shows real results. For
example, you can’t get started by promising to overhaul your company’s
end-to-end manufacturing process. Find one piece of your process where
AR can make a clear difference in terms of efficiency, build quality,
error reduction, and/or build time.
Is there a complex, costly step in your assembly or
manufacturing process that demands precision? Test-drive AR to show how
virtual instructions or 3D content overlaid onto the real-world could
help your technicians get it done faster, with a lower margin of error.
Measure and share the results among key stakeholders. Then, brainstorm
with your leadership on how you might bring the same results to other
sophisticated procedures or parts of the process.
One clear benefit from starting with an AR pilot, not an
overhaul: you can build an AR project in a week or two. You can
demonstrate viability and ROI quickly, and turn your skeptical CIO into
your partner on the next AR project.
2. Partner with IT as early as possible on your AR deployment A lot of people looking at AR don’t just face skepticism
from the C-level executives. A major roadblock can be the IT leaders
who have to implement and integrate AR within their already-complex IT
landscape. IT decision-makers might see AR as another system to
integrate — and another purchase order that needs approval. And worse,
some of the proprietary AR equipment and software can be expensive.
The good news on cost: An AR investment is lower than you
might think. Many businesses can benefit from AR using the handheld
devices already in their employees’ pockets, minimizing the need for an
additional hardware investment. For example, field technicians or
on-site workers can access intuitive AR instructions and diagrams for
how to conduct maintenance or repair complicated machines, all on their
smartphones or tablets.
As you collaborate with IT on your AR deployment, do not
lose sight of security considerations. Your IT team might not admit this
to you, but security concerns rob them of sleep. Consider security
issues from the start to mark certain that confidential content and data
are protected and that only the required users and devices get access
to AR applications.
For example, some enterprise AR trailblazers leverage their
company’s CAD libraries and use them to create digitized AR
instructions. CAD files are often some of the most critical and guarded
pieces of an enterprise’s intellectual property. (Just think of a
military contractor.) As you plan your AR project, work with IT partners
to ensure you can build within the firewall and follow all IT-governed
protocols.
3. Don’t build your AR deployment from scratch We recently met with a large enterprise company with operations around the globe. The company’s leaders had seen the value AR could bring to their operations and had been approached by a service provider to custom-build a bespoke AR solution and were ready to pull the trigger on development, with a multi-million dollar price tag. They had no idea there were mature toolsets on the market that could dramatically decrease the time-to-market and cost of such a solution.
As it happened, they learned these type of scalable solutions existed — ones that were pre-built and could enable them to grow at scale and quickly create new AR content as needed. The lesson to learn: don’t invent your own AR solution. You can prove ROI in collaboration with vendors who have built out successful AR use cases.
AR isn’t a promise, it’s ready to solve enterprise-level
problems. Get creative, but start small. Partner with IT on deployment,
particularly to ensure security needs are met. And leverage proven AR
success so you scale out to other processes and use cases.
Since co-founding Scope AR in
2011, CEO Scott Montgomerie was one of the first executives to get
augmented reality (AR) tools in use by multi-billion dollar
corporations.
Lockheed Martin’s space division has partnered with Scope AR to support the manufacturing of spacecraft, including NASA’s Orion.
On September 14, Alice Bonasio, Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief posted
an article to TechTrends exploring Lockheed Martin’s expanding use of
Scope AR’s WorkLink, particularly the work done on their Orion project
using Scope AR’s WorkLink. Some highlights from the article:
“In a complex field where errors simply cannot be made, Scope AR’s
WorkLink Augmented Reality platform has tremendously helped our space
division build high quality spacecraft by reducing the time it takes to
interpret work instructions by more than 95 percent, as well as reducing
training time and errors significantly,” says Shelley Peterson,
emerging technologies lead, Lockheed Martin. “The ability to easily use
the product across platforms means that anyone on our team, including
our interns, can take advantage of AR to build and use manufacturing
instructions quickly and accurately.”
Over the course of their AR deployment, the team achieved an
astonishing 95% reduction in the time it takes technicians to interpret
drawings and text instructions and 85% reduction in overall time for
training.
On August 1, in the Wall Street Journal, Sara Castellanos posted an article exploring Lockheed Martin’s use of augmented reality, particularly the work done on their Orion project using Scope AR’s WorkLink. Some highlights from the article:
Lockheed Martin Corp.’s space division is using augmented reality
headsets and software to speed up the time it takes for engineers to
learn about and conduct manufacturing processes on spacecraft, said
Yvonne Hodge, the division’s vice president and chief information
officer.
“This is a really exciting capability that can really accelerate us and make us more competitive,” she said. Before, for example, technicians used paper instructions or 3-D models on a computer in certain manufacturing processes of Orion. Now, instead of having to look through binders of data or content on the computer across the room, they can wear an AR device such as HoloLens, which overlays instructions for drilling or applying torque to specific parts of the spacecraft, said Shelley Peterson, augmented reality systems engineer at Lockheed Martin.
The time it takes for a technician to “ramp up,” or to understand the
drilling processes, has been reduced from eight hours to about 45
minutes using augmented reality headsets, she said. It recently took
about 2 weeks to conduct a manufacturing process which involved drilling
and inserting panels into the Orion spacecraft, Ms. Peterson said. That
process had taken about six weeks in the past, she said.
One of the questions we get a lot is “How do we make AR instructions if we don’t have 3D models?”
It’s a valid question. The WorkLink platform was built primarily around the concept that organizations would be leveraging their own products’ CAD models to create augmented reality training and instruction materials. Many of our clients are using it in exactly that way, and having no difficulty in achieving that workflow. If you’re in that category then congratulations! you can probably grab a coffee.
The scenarios where this approach doesn’t fit tend to be in a few general categories
“We need to assist our employees on equipment that is supplied by a vendor”
“The CAD files exist and we own them, but we are struggling to get them released to us”
“This equipment pre-dates our CAD software”
In actuality, most of these scenarios
are likely to be short-lived. Where IP protection is a concern, for
instance, CAD files can be converted and simplified at source to
maximize the value to instruction while minimizing the exposure of
proprietary information. In addition, the very nature of self-authoring
keeps that exposure limited to your internal content authors and a
pre-approved workforce working across a secure network. As the benefits
of AR instruction and assistance become more commonly understood, these
barriers are starting to fall.
In the meantime though, it can be
extremely useful to have techniques for these situations, and we thought
we would share a few, as well as publish a WorkLink project
specifically made with no supplied or ‘made to order’ 3D content
whatsoever as an example. We chose a basic car maintenance example,
commonplace and straightforward, but also a good reference point for
more complex situations.
LESS IS MORE One key thing to understand is that good AR instruction is really about adding as little to the user’s workspace as possible. While movies tend to portray augmented reality as the ability to add as much as possible, the fact is that this doesn’t work well. Our goal is to provide small, but key, additions to the space which will have maximum impact. From this perspective, having complex 3D models of the equipment is actually not beneficial at all. When working on an engine after all, the engine is there. We have no need to reproduce it. For a large variety of processes, arrows, circular beacons, basic tools and simple shapes are all that is needed to communicate everything your user needs to know… Particularly when they are animated effectively and placed exactly where the user needs them. All of these things, along with the ability to place video and images, are provided for your use in the WorkLink platform. For common objects that aren’t included, support for standard file formats makes adding 3rd party content (from public websites etc) a simple process also.
CONTEXT IS KING Under these circumstances, the AR author is still left with one significant challenge. You start your project, secure in the knowledge that you a combination of simple content is more than enough to communicate exactly what your end-user needs to know… as long as they are placed accurately in the workspace. Without a model of your equipment in the scene, how can you place your content? You need a reference framework of some kind… context.
There are a number of strategies for
establishing this framework. One method is to take some key measurements
and create some simple 3D shapes to represent key landmarks in your
work area. This can be effective for straightforward situations, and if
you have ready access to your equipment, some trial and error may be an
acceptable approach. If the area you want to present instructions in is
basically flat (or a series of flat spaces) such as a control panel for
instance, it might also be an option to take photos (carefully, and
square to the camera) and bring those images into your project as
stand-ins. For more complex, demanding projects, it may be worth the
effort to create 3D objects that are more representative of the actual
equipment. 3D models can be created at various levels of detail, and
there is ample middle ground between detailed CAD models and simple
shapes. Although this skill set isn’t available in every organization,
it’s also not particularly challenging or expensive to access. For some
projects it may be worth the relatively small expense of generating some
models for this purpose. This method is particularly important if your
process demands an extended disassembly or assembly process, where
layers of parts are needed.
REALITY CAPTURE For circumstances where the area is more complex, or where access is more challenging, what’s needed is some form of reality capture. This term covers a broad variety of options, but the essence is basically the same… the ability to go into a space and quickly generate a 3D model of it without any particular skills. These models can be extremely useful for providing context, but you will not have the ability to ‘disassemble’ them. These types of models will represent a contiguous surface with no recognition of where one object ends and another begins. Great for providing a reference framework, so you can use it as a map for placing your instruction, but you will likely not show this type of model to your end user.
Here are some of the major options:
Laser Scanning: If you have
access to laser scanning equipment, or your budget allows contracting
these services, this can be an effective way to get a surface model of a
work area.
Photogrammetry: This is
relatively simple process, requiring access to a camera and. Essentially
the process is to take a large number of photographs (>100) of a
work area, from a wide variety of angles and distances, and using
generally inexpensive 3rd party software to generate a textured 3D
model. Results can vary, and depending on the software you may have to
manually scale the resulting model, but this technique can be quite
useful in the right circumstances.
Depth Camera/3D Sensor: This is currently our preferred method.
Utilizing a handheld depth camera, either built into a smartphone, or
as an external accessory to a tablet or smartphone, you can essentially
walk around an area and generate a simple textured 3D model ‘on the
fly’. Formats used are compatible with WorkLink, so you can bring the
model in immediately and use it as a quite accurate reference for
placing content.
Results from all of these methods can
provide workable results, but detail levels vary. The goal here is to
allow a rapid reference framework to be put in place, low detail levels
are entirely acceptable for the less expensive approaches.
TEST DRIVE If you’re interested in this approach, I highly recommend you check out our “A3 Maintenance Demo” using the free WorkLink authoring app. It’s designed to take full advantage of the Microsoft HoloLens, so if you have access to one, definitely use that, but you can download it on any device’s store. Log in as a guest and load the A3 project, then either use a standard Scope AR marker or “Interactive Mode” (on handheld devices) to view it. You can also see this project featured in the video at the top of this post.
The project includes a series of
maintenance instructions designed to be viewed directly on the vehicle
itself. We’ve included some additional content strictly to help
demonstrate the concepts discussed here. The car outline is a commercial
3D model, but is included only to provide context for those viewing the
instructions away from the car, and would not otherwise be needed. The
engine model itself was scanned in about 15 minutes using a smartphone
with a 3D depth camera. Again, when viewing these instructions on the
vehicle itself, this model would not normally be included. We’ve
included it in the demo to show what type of results can be expected
from this sort of process, and also to help viewers understand the
context of these instructions.
Visibility switches (blue spheres)
are provided to allow you to show and hide the various models. Turn off
the car body and engine to view the instructions as they would appear
when seen on the real car.
As you will see, this approach makes for a very effective style of
instruction. For many of our clients, projects like this are the answer
to a difficult question, allowing them to quickly create effective
instructions without the need for a lot of engineering support or
external resources.
For more information on creating AR Work instructions with no coding or previous experience, check out the WorkLink page, or see our Youtube channel, and be sure to keep track of the latest Scope AR news on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter with the links below.
Today in ARtillry, Mike Boland posted an article about the incredible ROI metrics experienced by Lockheed Martin, Unilever and Prince Castle. Here are some highlights from the article:
As we’ve examined in past reports and our latest market sizing
figures, enterprise AR’s biggest friction is with enterprises
themselves. This is due to typical red tape, sales cycles and risk
aversion. But the walls are breaking down and we could see a tipping
point in the next few years.
This is the adoption pattern we saw with enterprise smartphone adoption over the past 10 years: Like that shift, enterprise AR (and VR for that matter) will build slow then happen fast.
Speaking of Scope AR, it also announced it’s integrating its two main
products: Remote AR and WorkLink. The former enables remote live
assistance, while the latter enables creation and authoring of AR
instructions which are then overlaid on machine parts with dimensional
accuracy.
Bringing them together makes sense and creates a “whole is greater
than the sum of its parts” dynamic. For example, pre-authored
instructions can guide field workers, but then remote subject mater
experts (SME) can drop in via video call for an additional layer of “see
what I see” support.
This makes the product suite more versatile, which should in turn
support Scope AR’s continued growth, which has been strong so far. For
example, the combined product could accelerate penetration into new
verticals beyond the industrial settings where Scope AR focuses today.
This week in Tom’s Hardware, Kevin Carbotte published an article about the merging of Scope AR’s two products, Remote AR and WorkLink. Here are some highlights from the article:
Scope AR today revealed its plans to bring the Remote AR and WorkLink applications together as one.
Scope AR offers two enterprise-level augmented reality applications. The company’s WorkLink software enables hardware manufacturers to create 3D augmented reality repair procedure instructions for on-site service technicians to follow, and Remote AR is remote assistance application that enables service technicians to collaborate in real time with remote product experts who can advise on a repair.
This week in UploadVR, Jamie Feltham published an article about the
merging of Scope AR’s two products, Remote AR and WorkLink. Here are
some highlights from the article:
Among many other possibilities, two of AR’s most promising use-cases are real-time collaboration and instructional experiences. San Francisco-based Scope AR has been working on both of these solutions for some time but, to take its work a step further, it’s now combining the two.
By combining the two into one platform, Scope AR hopes to provide a
more versatile experience for users. Experts will be able to ‘drop-in’
to the pre-built instructions to provide further assistance or assess a
task completed using WorkLink instructions. Having a call with an expert
just a few button presses away incase you have questions about setup
could be incredibly useful