2019: The year AR finally goes from “unsexy” to cool?

2019: The year AR finally goes from “unsexy” to cool?

December 18, 2018 – Greg Nichols:

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.”

Among the most promising efforts, the Open AR Cloud Organization was unveiled at AWE EU in mid-October.

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: Dos and Don’ts of Enterprise AR

XR Talks: Dos and Don’ts of Enterprise AR

AR Insider
November 30, 2018 –  Mike Boland:

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.

Scope AR CEO Scott Montgomerie at AWE Europe

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.”

Scope AR’s WorkLink software reduced Lockheed Martin’s “orient & decide” portion of a satellite assembly by 99 percent.

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.”

Prince Castle used Scope AR’s Remote AR and achieved 100 percent first time diagnosis rate and a 50 percent labor cost reduction

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.

Unilever used Remote AR and was able to reduce downtime by 50% for an ROI of 1,717%.

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.”

Scope AR CEO Scott Montgomerie at AWE Europe

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’.”

Lockheed Martin Orion Concept


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.”

Watch video from AWE EU

NASA is using HoloLens AR headsets to build its new spacecraft faster

NASA is using HoloLens AR headsets to build its new spacecraft faster

MIT Technology Review
October 9, 2018 – Erin Winick:

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.

How to convince your Enterprise to buy into AR

How to convince your Enterprise to buy into AR

VentureBeat

September 19, 2018 – Scott Montgomerie:

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.

Tech Trends: Building Spaceships with Mixed Reality

Tech Trends: Building Spaceships with Mixed Reality

View of Lockheed Martin AR Demo Area - ScopeAR Tech Trends Lockheed Martin

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.

For the full article, click here

WSJ: Lockheed Martin Deploys Augmented Reality for Spacecraft Manufacturing

WSJ: Lockheed Martin Deploys Augmented Reality for Spacecraft Manufacturing

Augmented Reality for Spacecraft Manufacturing

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.

For the full article, click here

AR Training Without CAD Files: A How-to Guide

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.

Graham Melley
Principal/Co-Founder
Scope AR

ARtillry: Scope AR Demonstrates 99% Productivity Boost

ARtillry: Scope AR Demonstrates 99% Productivity Boost

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.

Read the full article here: http://artillry.co/2018/06/07/scope-ar-demonstrates-99-productivity-boost/

Media Contact:
Brittany Edwards
Carve Communications for Scope AR
Email: scopear@carvecom.com
Phone: 210-382-2165

Tom’s Hardware: Scope AR Is Bringing Its Remote AR, WorkLink Apps Together

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.

Read the full article here: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/scope-ar-remote-ar-worklink-combined,37132.html

Media Contact:
Brittany Edwards
Carve Communications for Scope AR
Email: scopear@carvecom.com
Phone: 210-382-2165

UploadVR: Scope AR Merges Its AR Collaboration And Instructional Apps

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

Read the full article here: https://uploadvr.com/scope-ar-merges-ar-collaboration-instructional-apps/

​​Media Contact:
Brittany Edwards
Carve Communications for Scope AR
Email: scopear@carvecom.com
Phone: 210-382-2165