Expert advice to maximize cable service life and performance
13.01.2017
An investment in augmented and virtual technology is an investment in people
Pokémon GO, drone racing, and video games have people talking about augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). While gaming is projected to take the largest part of the AR/VR market ($11.6 billion by 2025, according to Goldman Sachs), engineering and non-gaming businesses might be first to adopt this technology. As AR/VR capabilities expand into design and engineering, let’s take a look at the trends and what we may expect from the next potential computer revolution.
Applications are Key
“Everyone is concerned about the best headset and hardware associated with augmented reality, but that concern is secondary,” says Dan Arczynski, CEO of Index AR solutions. “Companies can deploy AR right now on smart phones or tablets. The difference maker is the application and how it makes the user more capable, more productive and more valuable. There is good and bad AR, and it’s not only based on the hardware.” Arczynski saw the potential in applied enterprise augmented reality when working at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) and Huntington Ingalls Industries. The shipyard began working with augmented reality in 2011 when it was exploring building ships without using paper drawings.
Even today as NNS continues to develop and deploy augmented reality applications, it decided not to commercialize its technology. At that point, NNS and Index signed their teaming agreement. Together, NNS and Index have developed and deployed 57 enterprise augmented reality projects over the last six years. “Augmented reality is not new technology...NNS and Index are proving its value every day,” notes Arczynski. “It will take some companies longer to understand how to use it properly, but over time AR will completely revolutionize the way a skilled worker does his or her work.”
Augmented reality is changing the way people communicate to each other, across companies, and across multiple disciplines. In the past, people would meet in one room with thousands of dollars of hardware to see an AR/VR presentation. There was no cost-effective, reliable, real time, or mobile way to conduct a presentation with this type of technology. Today, however, anyone with a smartphone could get real-time data on an AR/VR platform. This is all mainly due to the cost and size reduction in hardware. Currently, finding the best way to aggregate, distribute, and communicate data to people with this hardware is the focus.