Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, P&G Lead Effort to Shape Future of Augmented Reality
As technologies become more prevalent there is often a need to produce guidelines that will ensure standardization. One such technology is Augment Reality (AR). On April 11, a standard was released by UI Labs The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA).
The (AR) hardware and software functional requirements guidelines will help AR technology companies develop products for industrial users.
These AR functional requirements documents will lead to technology that improves the performance and efficiency for manufacturers in a number of areas, including employee training and safety; factory floor and field services operations; machine assembly, inspection and repair; manufacturing space and product design, according to the groups.
Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Procter & Gamble initiated the guidelines development process as part of a project through the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII)), a UI LABS collaboration.
Recently, 65 organizations — including industry, AR providers, universities, and government agencies — came together for a workshop to offer insight into their challenges and needs to further develop the guidelines.
>The functional requirements were created in March at the DMDI workshop, whose participants included the three project leads — Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Procter & Gamble — along with Microsoft, General Electric, Rolls-Royce, Dow Chemical, Intel, the US Air Force, Stanley Black & Decker, Johnson & Johnson, Newport News Shipbuilding, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, DAQRI, Upskill, Optech 4D, ScopeAR, IQagent, Six 15 and Real Wear along with others.
“For the first time, industry — both suppliers and users in the AR space — will have access to a benchmark set of requirements that will help them develop a roadmap and source, select, evaluate and deploy augmented reality solutions,” said Mark Sage, executive director of AREA. “These functional requirements will be used to help continue the development of the AR ecosystem.”
The documents address features that include:
- Hardware: Battery Life; Connectivity; Field of View; On-board Storage; On-board Operating System; Environmental; Inputs/Outputs and Safety.
- Software: Authoring; AR Content; Creating 3D Content; Deployment of AR Content and Internet of Things.
Augmented reality superimposes computer-generated content on a user’s view of the real world, using glasses, headsets or tablets to provide a composite view. Unlike virtual reality, which creates a totally artificial environment, AR retains the existing environment and displays new information on top of it.
The global AR market is expected to exceed $95 by 2023, according to a recent Credence Research report. Big Market Research reports that the global augmented reality and virtual reality gear market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 37.45% between 2017-2021.
“Augmented reality has immense potential to transform manufacturing, and early adopters are seeing impressive productivity and quality improvements,” said Thomas McDermott, executive director of DMDII. “However, wide adoption of this technology requires collaboration among the industrial companies operating on the front lines and the AR providers designing solutions to ensure the technology under development meets the needs of industry.”
