Scope AR Acquires Augmented Reality Toolset Company WakingApp

Acquisition will accelerate continued innovation and development of company’s WorkLink platform

San Francisco, CA – December 11, 2019Scope AR, the pioneer of enterprise-class augmented reality (AR) solutions, today announced its acquisition of WakingApp, an AR technology company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. With this acquisition, six of the founding members of the WakingApp team will remain with the company and bring additional resources and expertise for developing the next generation of Scope AR’s augmented reality knowledge platform, WorkLink.

“We’re extremely pleased with the growth we’ve seen to date of enterprises adopting AR,” said Scott Montgomerie, CEO and co-founder of Scope AR. “With that growth comes more knowledge of what our customers need to successfully build AR into their business. The WakingApp team brings a great mix of AR development experience and creative thinking to Scope AR as we continue to evolve our WorkLink platform to meet our customers’ current and future needs.”

WakingApp has a proprietary AR platform with technologies to help enterprises across industries easily create cutting-edge AR experiences. The acquisition of WakingApp by Scope AR expands the company’s resources to more rapidly deliver new functionality to its WorkLink solution and push the boundaries of what’s possible in enterprise AR as the market continues to mature. WorkLink is the industry’s only industrial AR knowledge platform to provide real-time remote assistance and access to pre-built AR work instructions simultaneously in one application to allow workers to easily access the knowledge they need.

“We are thrilled to join the Scope AR team and become an integral part in the delivery of first-class AR solutions to enterprise organizations,” said Matan Libis, CEO of WakingApp.

“We have a long history of supporting the most cutting-edge devices so our customers can take full advantage of AR’s most effective tools as soon as they hit the market,” said Scott Montgomerie, co-founder and CEO of Scope AR. “The HoloLens 2 represents the next generation of mixed reality hardware and we look forward to helping enterprise organizations drive even more impact through their use of AR.”

With support for Microsoft HoloLens 2, WorkLink users can explore even more complex, hands-free use cases as a result of the device’s improved wearability, expanded field of view, and enhanced gesture control and eye tracking. Now, enterprise workers can perform longer maintenance, repair or manufacturing procedures and conduct industrial tasks that require more precise hand control and interactivity. 

As a long-standing Mixed Reality Partner, Scope AR today also announced its status as a Microsoft mixed reality distributor-managed partner (DMP), making it an authorized HoloLens reseller. Additionally, the company now integrates with the Azure Active Directory and its WorkLink platform is available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace as a software solution optimized to run on Azure. Scope AR’s expanded partnership with Microsoft makes it even easier for enterprise organizations to not only find AR solutions that fit their use case needs, but also implement those solutions on supported hardware in a more seamless manner to start benefiting from the value AR can deliver immediately. 

About Scope AR

Scope AR is the pioneer of enterprise-class augmented reality solutions, delivering the industry’s only cross-platform AR tools for getting workers the knowledge they need, when they need it. The company is revolutionizing the way enterprises work and collaborate by offering an integrated AR platform that provides more effective and efficient knowledge-sharing to conduct complex remote tasks, employee training, product and equipment assembly, maintenance and repair, field and customer support, and more. The company’s device-agnostic technology supports smartphones, tablets and wearables, making it easy for leading organizations like Unilever, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, Becton Dickinson, Honeywell, GE and others to quickly scale their use of AR to any remote worker. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco with offices in Edmonton, Canada.

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

Scope AR Announces Support for Microsoft HoloLens 2 to Deliver the Next Generation of Mixed Reality Use Cases to Enterprise Customers

Company also becomes an authorized HoloLens reseller through selection as a mixed reality distributor-managed partner (DMP)

San Francisco, CA – November 7, 2019 Scope AR, the pioneer of enterprise-class augmented reality (AR) solutions, today announced support for Microsoft HoloLens 2, which is now generally available. The company’s industrial AR knowledge platform, WorkLink, is available on the new headset immediately, allowing enterprise customers to quickly deploy AR instructions or conduct live, remote assistance video calls in even more sophisticated, hands-free use cases. 

“We have a long history of supporting the most cutting-edge devices so our customers can take full advantage of AR’s most effective tools as soon as they hit the market,” said Scott Montgomerie, co-founder and CEO of Scope AR. “The HoloLens 2 represents the next generation of mixed reality hardware and we look forward to helping enterprise organizations drive even more impact through their use of AR.”

With support for Microsoft HoloLens 2, WorkLink users can explore even more complex, hands-free use cases as a result of the device’s improved wearability, expanded field of view, and enhanced gesture control and eye tracking. Now, enterprise workers can perform longer maintenance, repair or manufacturing procedures and conduct industrial tasks that require more precise hand control and interactivity. 

As a long-standing Mixed Reality Partner, Scope AR today also announced its status as a Microsoft mixed reality distributor-managed partner (DMP), making it an authorized HoloLens reseller. Additionally, the company now integrates with the Azure Active Directory and its WorkLink platform is available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace as a software solution optimized to run on Azure. Scope AR’s expanded partnership with Microsoft makes it even easier for enterprise organizations to not only find AR solutions that fit their use case needs, but also implement those solutions on supported hardware in a more seamless manner to start benefiting from the value AR can deliver immediately. 

About Scope AR

Scope AR is the pioneer of enterprise-class augmented reality solutions, delivering the industry’s only cross-platform AR tools for getting workers the knowledge they need, when they need it. The company is revolutionizing the way enterprises work and collaborate by offering an integrated AR platform that provides more effective and efficient knowledge-sharing to conduct complex remote tasks, employee training, product and equipment assembly, maintenance and repair, field and customer support, and more. The company’s device-agnostic technology supports smartphones, tablets and wearables, making it easy for leading organizations like Unilever, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, Becton Dickinson, Honeywell, GE and others to quickly scale their use of AR to any remote worker. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco with offices in Edmonton, Canada.

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

Can Augmented Reality Make Everyone Experts?

Can Augmented Reality Make Everyone Experts?

Forbes: Tim Bajarin – June 14, 2019

I happen to be very navigationally challenged. For years, as I traveled around the world, I used a paper map to get me to the next meeting or location I was going to, and I would often still get lost. This trait was so prominent that my family and friends nicknamed me “Wrongway Bajarin.”

Due to my work in the UK with various publications, which started in 1984, I learned that London cab drivers were the least navigationally challenged cabbies in the world. For them to get their license to drive the famous Black Cabs, they had to memorize the entire map of London and its surroundings so they could get people to their locations the fastest way possible. In one of my first trips to London, I asked a Black Cab driver how long it took him to memorize the London street maps, and he said that it took him about a year before he could pass his license test.

Fast forward 35 years later and thanks to digital maps, GPS and various navigation tools, I could drive a London cab today and be just as much as an expert about London streets as those Black Cab drivers are today.

While the GPS and maps example illustrates how technology can help us become expert navigators, at least in cars, the introduction of AR tools will soon make it possible for many to become, if not an expert, at least more capable of doing things that we have no training or experience within many areas.
A good example of AR adding an untrained skill to your capabilities would be to use an AR app to help put together complicated furniture, assemble barbecues, electric bikes and a plethora of things we might buy that needs assembly.

Many makers of products are developing AR apps that can overlay on a product you buy from them and show you how to assemble that piece of furniture in a visual step-by-step process.  It is not a video of how to do it. An AR app overlays the assembly process on top of the actual product you are putting together and walking you through each step in an on-demand process.

I recently attended the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, CA, and met with the President of Scope AR, David Nedohin. They had a sign in their booth that said “Anyone Can Be An Expert,” so I asked him what this meant.

It turns out that using AR integrated into various mixed reality glasses, their software platform can help companies make “experts” of non-experts which would help them identify equipment problems and if possible, even repair them on site using an AR program that overlays the repair steps on top of the actual equipment that needs to be fixed.

Mr. Nedohin told me that for many of Scope AR’s clients, if a piece of equipment in a factory goes down, typically an expert who may know how to fix it is somewhere far away. In the past, most companies dealt with this by flying an expert to the location of the problem to fix it onsite. With Scope AR, businesses can give the average non-expert employee on-demand knowledge with intuitive AR instructions. The company’s AR knowledge platform, WorkLink, gives companies precisely this kind of augmented reality support.

Another example of how Scope AR’s software works are how they are assisting Lockheed Martin engineers building NASA’s Orion spacecraft, a vehicle designed to travel to Mars.

“In the old way of doing things, an engineer may start with a 3,000-page binder full of instructions for how to build a specific aspect of the spacecraft. A technician searches the binder to find the correct fastener and memorizing the torque setting, before actually going in to tighten the fastener. Today that process is relatively cumbersome, slow, and could be subject to errors”, Nedohin explained to me.

“Using their Scope AR software, the workflow is designed with hands-free information viewed through a Microsoft HoloLens headset.  Using three-dimensional views with AR step-by-step instructions, the engineer can see what they need to do, what the torque setting is, and where the fastener goes.”

When Apple showed off new AR apps at their recent World Wide Developers Conference, they showed its use in a gaming app. When they originally introduced AR Kit, their software tools for creating AR apps, they also emphasized its use in gaming. While AR in games will be a big market, the most significant demand for AR now is coming from businesses who want to use it for internal and external training as well as for field service projects. This translates into the vision that Mr. Nedohin of Scope AR is proposing, that “everyone can be an expert.” I understand that, to some degree, this is marketing hyperbole. On the other hand, his vision is on target as AR and VR and mixed reality software and glasses can help one become proficient in a lot of areas where years of training used to be needed to repair sophisticated machinery, assemble equipment and even learn to operate them virtually.

AR and VR is still a nascent market, but after walking the exhibit halls of AWE, I can see that the tools and devices that support its use, especially in business applications, is moving at a rapid pace. A vision of making people experts in areas where they have had no training before is no longer a far fetched dream. This is why the business market, primarily vertically driven ones, will be where AR glasses will take off first before it ever gets broad acceptance in the consumer market outside of gaming.

Read original article.

3 Reasons Your Business Needs an AR Platform

3 Reasons Your Business Needs an AR Platform

At Augmented World Expo 2019 (AWE), the premiere augmented and virtual reality conference, we unveiled our upgraded version of WorkLink, a comprehensive AR platform built for the enterprise. WorkLink is the industry’s only knowledge platform that can deliver real-time AR content and work instructions, as well as live video support simultaneously in one application.

With today’s announcement, we’ve made it easier than ever for anyone to become an expert with the support of AR. WorkLink previously allowed users to quickly create AR content and connect to the knowledge they need with step-by-step work instructions and live support. With the addition of session recording to WorkLink, workers can now easily document their experience too. This ensures that the expert training and support delivered during live video calls isn’t lost when a user hangs up, but instead become shareable, repeatable assets for your whole organization to leverage. Why? Your workforce gets critical and accurate knowledge faster — which is particularly essential in scenarios like equipment repairs or maintenance, to ensure rapid diagnosis and minimal disruption to a production line. Subject matter experts and trainers can spend less time covering the same support scenarios and more time adding value to your business.

Check out our announcement for all the new details.

So why should your company be looking at an AR platform like WorkLink? Why shouldn’t you look to a custom-built solution from an AR vendor — or a made-from-scratch deployment developed in-house? Here are three reasons:

1. Platforms are delivery agnostic. They extend across all major AR ecosystems so you’re not chained to a single vendor or OS in a rapidly-evolving landscape. Imagine if you built the AR use case for your business on one of the first pairs of AR glasses. As many of you will see at AWE 2019, our industry is now generations beyond that in terms of performance, experience, and usability. You don’t want to get locked into a single ecosystem. Find a platform that extends across all major headsets, mobile devices and operating systems so that today’s AR content can be projected on tomorrow’s devices.

2. A platform can ensure critical knowledge won’t be lost. You want to ensure training and support sessions become sharable, repeatable assets. Shared knowledge shouldn’t be a one-off conversation or session. If a technical assembly session helped one field technician, the odds are very good it could help everyone else doing that task. It’s no longer solely an AR-enhanced support or training scenario. Our new session recording functionality transforms real-time knowledge into a reusable asset that can be accessed and shared by your teams across the globe. This is particularly important in an seasoned workers where employees with a career’s worth of expertise are retiring and walking out the door with valuable knowledge.

3. A platform can help you build a knowledge repository. Institutional memory carries tangible value for your business. The expertise held by your company’s career engineers and master technicians needs to reach your new-hires. You need to invest in knowledge management to ensure that the expertise that steers your business is not lost when someone leaves — or when the robots join your builders on the assembly line. Start building a knowledge repository that gives you the ability to capture and share the expertise specific to your business. AR is ideal for teaching someone how to perform specialized tasks or solve complex problems virtually hands-on. Find a platform that helps you create content (either pre-built or on the fly) and establish links between your experts and your future workforce.

Tom’s Hardware: Remote AR Technical Assistance Platform Gets ARCore Support

tom'sHARDWARE

Kevin Carbotte from Tom’s Hardware released an article this week on how Remote AR now supports ARCore. Here are some highlights:

Scope AR continues to improve the Remote AR augmented reality technical assistance platform. The company today announced that it adopted Google ARCore 1.0 to extend the capabilities of Remote AR to a much wider range of devices, which means enterprise customers can now use Scope AR’s advanced tech support tools without deploying specialized hardware.

Scope AR’s Remote AR application is a handy tool for live, on-site technical assistance. With a connected device such as a tablet, smartphone, smartglasses, or AR headset, service technicians can start a live video chat with an off-site expert who can then guide them through unfamiliar procedures or troubleshoot problems. Remote experts can also draw and add 3D content in real-time to give technicians more context to make educated repairs.

Remote AR is now almost completely platform agnostic. The software runs on Android and iOS devices, still supports Tango devices, and runs on Windows Surface devices. Scope AR also introduced support for Microsoft HoloLens and ODG’s R7 Smartglasses. Montgomerie said he is also keeping a close eye on Magic Leap, but he doesn’t expect enterprise customers to adopt the Magic Leap One headset.

The ARCore-enabled version of Remote AR is available today, and all existing license holders should have access automatically.

For the full article: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/scope-ar-remote-assistance-google-arcore,36696.html

siliconANGLE: Scope AR brings remote support into your garage with ARCore integration

siliconANGLE Logo

Kyt Dotson from SiliconANGLE released an article this week on how Remote AR now supports ARCore. Here are some highlights:

Enterprise-class augmented reality company Scope AR today announced the integration of Google Inc.’s ARCore into its remote support video calling application Remote AR. This integration of ARCore extends Remote AR capabilities on newer Android devices and follows the integration of Apple Inc.’s ARKit for greater iOS device support.

Scope AR worked hand-in-hand with Google to build Remote AR app so that it will be compatible with all ARCore-enabled devices, which includes over 100 million Android smartphones.

The Remote AR app allows a remote helper to assist someone else in the field who has a mobile device with a camera and a screen. Normally this will be a smartphone the user probably already has. The onsite technician can point the device at what needs to be discussed and the app allows the support expert to draw on the screen while speaking in order to provide animations and graphics that will appear to be attached to objects in the world.

This is an empowering effect of augmented reality for connecting support and field workers. Someone in the field essentially can give a “window” into a remote workspace, the remote car garage, that gives the support expert a much better idea of what is being looked at and also allows more accurate communication.

For the full article: https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/03/20/scope-ar-brings-remote-support-garage-arcore-integration/