ISMAR is the 15th annual research conference focusing on the topics of Mixed and Augmented Reality. The conference spans many domains from science and technology, including real world applications and explorations by media professionals, social scientists, humanity scholars and designers.

The IEEE Computer Society and IEEE VGC organize the symposium and bring leading academic research to the conference. The conference takes place during five days and comprises a number of workshops and tutorials where research papers on AR and MR are presented and discussed.

The tutorials and workshops include topics on:

• Augmented Reality
• Collaborative Mixed Reality environments
• Human factors and behavioral analysis in AR
• Standards in AR
• MASHD (media, art, social science, humanities and design)

Why AREA Members Attend this Event

ISMAR brings together scientists and professionals from all over the world, and AREA members attend the conference for insights into cutting-edge research and applications in Mixed and Augmented Reality.

AREA member DAQRI will be in attendance and will present a tutorial of ARToolKit.

Agenda

The five-day conference agenda, including topics for tutorials and workshops can be found on the ISMAR website.

Registration and Fees

A detailed registration form with fees, discounts and cancellation policy is published here.

Venue

ISMAR 2016 will take place at:

Fiesta Americana Merida Hotel
Paseo Montejo No. 451
Centro
97000 Merida
Mexico

Access and Accommodations

The ISMAR website provides details on recommended accommodations, as well as travel information and access.

Sponsors and Host

The following companies are sponsoring or partnering with ISMAR 2016:

• AREA member DAQRI (ARToolKit.org)
• Vuforia
• Intel
• Fayteq
• AWE
• Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan
• Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi
• University of Bristol
• Qualcomm

Comments or Questions?

General inquiries may be directed to: [email protected].

Please consult the ISMAR website (contacts link) for more information.

Getenergy Global is a two-day annual conference and exhibition dedicated to training and knowledge delivery for oil and gas industry employees. In 2015 the event attracted over 500 attendees from 50 countries and 75 oil and gas companies. Through keynotes and collaborative workshops, Getenergy Global provides a forum for developing partnerships, enabling the workforce and driving efficiency in projects.

The event features a unique “Learning Arena” and offers networking opportunities with executives from government and the private sector. The conference program features:

• Education and training
• Case studies on mobile and e-learning
• Integrating human factors requirements into competency assurance
• Uses of simulation technology in drilling and well control

Why AREA Members Attend this Event

During Getenergy Global, AREA members and attendees can meet energy industry leaders to discuss how Augmented Reality can boost learning and information retention that, in turn, can improve operational efficiency.

AREA members can meet energy industry partners and manufacturers seeking to explore the use of Augmented Reality in their delivery of high-quality learning content and programs.

Agenda

The conference agenda can be viewed here. The agenda and other event information is also available as a PDF file.

Registration and Fees

For registration and ticket information, please click here.

Venue

Getenergy Global will be held at the Business Design Centre in the heart of Islington.

Business Design Centre
52 Upper Street
London N1 OQH
UK

Access and Accommodations

For a list of accommodations please also see this map provided by Getenergy. Transportation information can be found here.

Comments or Questions?

Please contact Virginia Baker at Getenergy Events for more information.

There are many use cases for Augmented Reality in the aerospace industry and the leaders in this industry have a long history with the technology. In this post, we review some of the milestones and provide highlights of the recent AREA webinar.

In 1969, while working in the Human Engineering Division of the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory (USAF), Wright-Patterson AFB, Thomas Furness presented a paper entitled “Helmet-Mounted Displays and their Aerospace Applications” to attendees of the National Aerospace Electronics Conference.

Over 20 years later the paper was one of eight references cited by two Boeing engineers, Thomas Caudell and David Mizell. In their 1992 paper published in the Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Caudell and Mizell coined the term “Augmented Reality.” The degree to which the team drew from the work of Furness, who had started the Human Interface Technology Lab at University of Washington in 1989, is unclear but the focus of the Boeing team was on reducing errors when building wire harnesses for use in aircraft and other manual manufacturing tasks in aerospace. 

While the technology was not sufficiently mature to leave the lab or to deliver on its potential at the time, they suggested that with an AR-assisted system an engineer would in the future be able to perform tasks more quickly and with fewer errors. 

Proof of Concepts

Approximately fifteen years later, in 2008, Paul Davies, a research & development engineer at AREA member Boeing began working with Boeing Technical Fellow, Anthony Majoros. Together, Davies and Majoros picked up where the Caudell and Mizell paper left off. They used commercially-available technologies such as Total Immersion’s D’Fusion platform to show how technicians building satellites could perform complex tasks with Augmented Reality running on tablets.

Airbus has also been experimenting with Augmented Reality for over a decade. In this paper published in the ISMAR 2006 proceedings, Dominik Willers explains how Augmented Reality was being studied for assembly and service tasks but judged too immature for introduction into production environments. The paper, authored in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich, focused on the need for advances in tracking. 

Since those proof of concept projects, AR technology has advanced to the point that it is being explored for an increasing number of use cases in the aerospace industry. In parallel with the expansion of use cases, the pace of applied research into AR-enabling technology components has not abated.

Augmented Reality in Aerospace in 2016

While today AR may not be found in many aerospace production environments, the promise of the technology to increase efficiency is widely acknowledged.

On February 18, David Doral of AERTEC Solutions, Jim Novack of Talent Swarm, and Raul Alarcon of the European Space Agency joined Paul Davies and me to discuss the status of Augmented Reality in their companies and client projects.

Each participant described the use cases and drivers for Augmented Reality adoption. For Boeing, the key metrics are reduction of errors and time to task completion. Use cases include training and work assistance. AERTEC Solutions, which works closely with Airbus, and Talent Swarm are both focusing on use cases where live video from a head-mounted camera can bring greater understanding of a technician’s context and questions, and permit more rapid analysis and resolution of issues.

The European Space Agency sees a variety of use cases on Earth and in space. Inspection and quality assurance, for example, could benefit from the use of Augmented Reality-assisted systems.

Turbulence Ahead 

During the discussion, webinar panelists explored the obstacles that continue to prevent full-scale adoption. In general, most barriers to adoption can be considered as technological in nature. But there are also significant obstacles stemming from human factors and business considerations. We also discussed the degree to which other industries may be able to apply lessons learned from aerospace.

To learn more about the state of AR in the aerospace industry, please watch the webinar archive.

Do you have use cases and projects that you would like to share with the AREA and our audiences? Please let us know in the comments of this post.

Use Cases for the Factory Floor

With successful conclusions of pilots and trials, Augmented Reality continues to move into areas where the overlay of virtual information promotes vehicle quality and helps employees work faster and better, but also where more experience with the technology is a prerequisite. As well, higher numbers of AR implementations put greater technical and organizational demands on projects.

One key trend is the growing number of use cases for Augmented Reality in pre- and post-production processes in the automotive industry. Vehicle design and development, and then final verification after assembly are the most popular use cases.

Lina Longhitano of Mercedes-Benz Vans leads the transformation of advanced manufacturing facilities through the Van Technology Center and has a wealth of experience with digital transformation in manufacturing and the use of Mixed and Augmented Reality in vehicle development. The center provides high-end visualization and analysis for ergonomics and buildability of vehicles.

In particular, she mentioned three Mixed Reality use cases for engineering:

• The visualization of out-of-position and validation of flexible parts.
• The overlay of digital crash simulation data on physical crash vehicles.
• Digital assembly and disassembly simulations with collision testing.

Mercedes-Benz Vans uses Augmented Reality for factory floor layout and design, as well as for visually inspecting components to assess differences between virtual and physical objects.

In a similar vein, Hermann Gross of Opel is putting AR to use in pre-production processes, especially in vehicle development and component integration. Opel’s Augmented Reality-assisted systems also verify the quality of physical vehicle mockups. Gross provides a number of examples for these, such as verifying the final position of parts and optimizing cable positioning. He revealed a number of benefits of AR, including:

• Shortening the duration of mockup builds and increasing their quality
• Speeding up problem solving
• Positively influencing data quality

On the other end of the production spectrum, Sebastian Rauh has in-depth knowledge about how Audi is using Augmented Reality for final assembly inspection. These range from vehicle start-up to engine parameter optimization and calibration of control units and sensor parameters. On behalf of Hochschule Heilbronn, Mr. Rauh is also working with Audi to design post-production verification workflows and equip personnel with Google Glass and the Epson Moverio BT-200 to execute tasks.

The Industrialization of Augmented Reality

Juergen Lumera of Bosch, an AREA sponsor member, is one of the first in automotive who is moving beyond simple AR prototypes and into larger deployments involving greater numbers of users, departments, processes and tools. Taking a holistic approach to the human, technological, financial and organizational aspects of incorporating AR technology across an enterprise, he outlined ways to expand projects beyond pilots. Mr. Lumera emphasized that AR adoption is a journey whose destination, as well as roadmap, has to be carefully planned in order to reduce risk and promote success.

Bosch’s Common Augmented Reality Platform (CAP) is an example of a system that integrates authoring and publishing of AR content across business units and technology silos, and can become part of a wider move towards the digital factory.

Matthias Ziegler of Accenture presented a framework for enterprise Augmented Reality adoption by Accenture’s clients and confirms the expanding interest in use of wearables that support AR for hands-free workplace performance. Accenture is expecting 212 billion devices and autonomously driven cars by 2020, with a doubling of IP traffic between 2013 and 2016. Bulky form factors will delay adoption by consumers, but Accenture sees enormous opportunity for hands-free AR-enabled displays in the enterprise space.

Their template, based on a number of pilot projects, compiles statistics and experiences and defines business value drivers and use cases, guiding investment in potential areas where AR can increase ROI. For example, if a company can quantify the length of time spent researching work instructions in paper documentation, and attribute a given number of errors to misinterpretations of drawings or procedures, then AR might promise higher returns.

Augmented Reality and Customer Experiences

Ashutosh Tomar of Jaguar Land Rover says the company’s vision is to use AR for enhancing the driver experience in their vehicles. Today’s typical car is packed with sensors and features—one type of vehicle having over 70 onboard computers and 170 “smart features.”

Customers are no longer judging automobile features as a selling point alone, but also expect a better customer experience. How can cars automatically change settings (e.g., music station, seat and mirror adjustments, etc.) based on who’s driving? How can cars communicate with drivers via other sensory inputs such as haptics? JLR is making large investments in human factors research and in ways to increase driver safety via Augmented Reality, for example:

• Visualization of “ghost cars” in windshields driving ahead to clearly demonstrate the safest way to make turns in a city.
• The projection of cones in windshields for training purposes.
• “B pillars” enhancing a driver’s line of sight and situational awareness by turning car walls “transparent” in certain situations, like when making narrow turns in cities.
• Haptic feedback in the seat behind a driver’s shoulder to alert them of another vehicle passing in their blind spot.

Legal Implications

New features such as the projection of information and images in the driver’s windshield will require new regulatory regimes. Brian Wassom, intellectual property attorney at Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP, described the current regulatory environment and spoke about the principles of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “Visual-Manual NHTSA Driver Distraction Guidelines for In-Vehicle Electronic Devices.”

• Distractions in all forms, including cognitive and visual, should be recognized by designers and regulators.
• Displays should be as near the driver’s forward line of sight as possible.
• A number of distracting features should be avoided entirely: glare, social media interactions and text that scrolls or contains more than 30 characters.
• Glances away from the road should last no more than 1.5 to 2 seconds.

The above principles apply to current systems (dashboard layouts with navigation and phone information), but might also be the basis of conversations about Augmented Reality safety and liability.

In his presentation, Ashutosh Tomar had also emphasized the need to minimize the amount of information displayed to drivers to reduce distraction, as a basic tenet of safety.

Conclusions

In addition to those already mentioned, there were interesting presentations by Volkswagen, Ubimax, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Feynsinn, Frauenhofer Insititute and others on topics ranging from showroom use cases to the latest research on AR user experiences.

Overall it was encouraging to witness the depth of questions about Augmented Reality being asked by companies in automotive manufacturing, research, design and others, and to get the sense of its evolving acceptance in enterprise, complete with growing pains and successes.

Shipbuilding has been the perfect environment for industrial innovation for hundreds of years. Sails to steam, wood to iron, rivets to welds, blueprints to CAD, stick-built to modular construction–all major innovations to building extraordinarily complex vehicles. At Newport News Shipbuilding, we constantly seek new innovations to improve our safety, quality, cost, and schedules. Since 2007, we have explored Augmented Reality as a means to shift away from paper-based documentation in our work.

Since we began looking into AR for construction, operation, and maintenance workflows, we’ve come up with hundreds of use-cases to improve tasks or processes. These range from assisting shipbuilders in painting, ship-fitting, electrical installation, pipefitting, and more in several ways – on new construction ships, ship overhaul, facility maintenance, and decommissioning. Every use-case improves our ability to deliver nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, but at different degrees of improvement.

We’re always adding new use-cases to the list, and we’ve needed to devise an adaptable framework for organizing and categorizing existing, proven uses and prioritizing future, potential use-cases.

Genesis of a Use Case

Augmented Reality should be employed first in places where it creates the most value – and that actually can be subjective. Sometimes, this is helping people become more efficient and working more quickly, sometimes this is about helping to reduce errors and rework, and sometimes it is all about improving safety. At Newport News Shipbuilding, a dedicated team of AR professionals help determine where AR is best suited, whether the technology is ready for the use-case, and how to best implement and scale a solution.

The first step in defining a use-case is performed by an AR industrial engineer, who determines where AR brings value in a workflow. She first meets with a skilled craftsman, and understands their challenges and needs. The industrial engineer identifies pain points in processes, such as when and where shipbuilders must consult paper documentation to complete a task. She must also consider human factors and always balance the needs of the craftsman against the capability of the AR solution as it can be delivered today.

Then, the AR engineer works with an AR designer and an AR developer to deliver a product. The AR designer determines the available data, components, interfaces and models for the system to satisfy requirements. Once the use-case is fully defined and the data is assembled, an AR developer implements software solutions, tests the system, and ensures reliable and adaptable development tools. At the end of the process, a new use-case is addressed, and a high-value product is delivered to the skilled craftsman.

A Classification Scheme

Over the years we’ve devised hundreds of use-cases and needed a way to understand and prioritize them. We started by categorizing them into a taxonomy that we think of as general, but we admit they might be specific to our business. We call these our seven use-case categories.

These 7 categories then are applied across three additional axes. These variables create a volume of exploration, or “trade space” for each use-case. The three application axes are as follows.

Return on Investment

When investing in new technology, it’s important to find those areas offering the highest return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent. At the same time, there are potentially high value use-cases that are simply not conducive to an AR solution today. As a professional AR team, we pride ourselves on understanding when we can have an impact, when we can have a really big impact, and when AR technology simply isn’t yet up to the challenge. We primarily focus on advancing the seven use-case categories, and use the three variable axes to ensure we are maximizing customer value and ROI. As our expertise has grown, and as the technology matures, we have steadily increased value and readiness of AR throughout the entire trade space.

Today, we assess highest potential ROI and use that as a metric for scaling priority. Our model shows the greatest ROI in use-cases for inspection, work instruction, and training. Our focus there is now on scalability. We also know that the ROI is really tied directly to the technology readiness levels (TRL) of AR for those use-cases. While we are certain there will be benefit, maybe even higher ROI, on workflow management, operations, safety, and logistics – the readiness levels of AR for those use-cases within our trade space simply isn’t as high (today) as for the first three mentioned. You can’t scale what doesn’t yet work. So for the latter four uses, therefore, the investment isn’t in scalability, but rather in improving the TRL.

As Augmented Reality technology becomes more capable and less expensive to implement, enterprises will find ever-increasing uses. We’d like to learn how others in different industries have been developing theirs. Please share your comments and experiences with us.