Webinars

The AREA Research Committee regularly hosts webinars about research topics and trends.

Member-exclusive webinars available are (more recent at the top):

• AREA Research Committee Webinar – Introducing FindAR Literature Search
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – European Union ARtwin Project
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – 3D Asset Use in Enterprise AR Research Project Report
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – Web based AR in Enterprise Research Project Report
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – Barriers to AR Adoption in Manufacturing
• Research Committee webinar with Dr. Steven Feiner of Columbia University
• AREA Research Committee webinar: Barriers to AR Adoption in Manufacturing
• Members Research Project Results: EPRI and Boeing
• How to assess safety and human factor risks in your AR project
• Members Research Project Results: AMRC and Huawei
• ROI Deep Dive
• Research Committee’s Safety and Human Factors Risks Webinar

Publicly available webinars are currently (more recent at the top):

• AREA Research Committee Webinar Research on Impacts of Light Emitted by AR Displays @ CIOP-PIB
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – Sensing Human Gestures from the Future Interfaces Group @Cargenie
• AREA Research Committee – 3D Asset Use in Enterprise AR Research Project Report
• AREA Research Committee – European Union ARtwin Project
• AREA Research Committee – Mixed AR User Experience Evaluation Methods
• AREA Research Committee Webinar Estimating Enterprise AR ROI using AREA’s On line Calculator
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – PTC Reality Lab Overview and Projects
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – Light Anchors and the Future Interfaces Group @ Carnegie Mellon University
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – CES 202 Round-Up with an Enterprise AR Twist
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – W3C Immersive Web WG and the Future of Web-based AR
• How Public Private Partnerships Conduct Research on AR in Manufacturing
• AREA Research Committee Webinar – Enterprise AR Interoperability and Standards
• Merging IoT, AI and AR: Foundations, Drivers, Challenges and Recommendations
• Current AR Research Projects with Dr. Rafael Radkowski, Iowa State University
• How AR impacts your company’s bottom line
• Developing AR and VR for Public Safety with Scott Ledgerwood of NIST

Ongoing initiatives

The AREA Research Committee is supporting members and the enterprise AR ecosystem through the following initiatives:

• AREA-directed Research Projects
• Human Factors Interest Group
• Best Practices in Enterprise AR Research
• AREA Enterprise AR Research Agenda

The AREA Enterprise AR Research Agenda guides and provides recommended topics for research funding/grant organizations of all sizes as well as researchers worldwide in their investment of resources into research that will accelerate the adoption of AR in enterprise settings. It is made publicly available by the AREA in order to support all members of the enterprise AR ecosystem.

Research Suppliers

The AREA Research Committee is pleased to have the opportunity to work with the following research organizations:

1. Brainwaive LLC on the Wearable AR security project
2. Strategy Analytics on the Measuring AR ROI project
3. The Manufacturing Technology Centre on the Safety and Human Factors project
4. xReality Lab @ Universität der Bundeswehr on the AR Adoption in Manufacturing project
5. Saverio Romeo, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Innovation Management Research, Birbeck, University of London

If you’d like to talk to us about the Research Committee or require additional information, please reach out to Christine Perey.

This member-exclusive webinar will enable attendees to learn more about:

• Current methods in use for assessing safety risks when introducing AR into the workplace
• Status of standards and regulations concerning AR as a component of workplace safety
• Core principles of “safety by design” for AR system development
• How AR can improve workplace safety
• How to assess the impacts of AR human factors on workplace safety using the new framework tool.

Chair/host

• Christine Perey, PEREY Research & Consulting

Speakers/Presenters

• Amina Naqvi, The MTC
• Gregory Garrett, The Boeing Company
• Peter Verstraeten, Proceedix

Timings are as follows:

9 AM Pacific/12 PM Eastern/5 PM UK/6 PM CET

Thank you for your interest in the AREA-directed research project topic submission. The deadline for the ballot was January, 14 2018 and the vote is closed.

As a member in good standing you are invited to vote for one of the  AREA-directed research project topics. Explanation of the topics have been prepared by members for your thorough review.

In the table below there is the topic number, name of member organization that submitted the topic, title and links to a short recorded video as well as a PDF which contains an overview and justification for the topic.

Each AREA member organization has one vote. Votes are weighted by the class of membership. A Sponsor member vote counts 4 points. The Contributor member vote counts 2 points. Any organization that has submitted a topic may vote (the vote counts 1 point).

If you have any questions or seek detailed information about the AREA Research selection process, you are invited to request the policies and procedures by sending e-mail to the AREA Research Commmittee  chair, Christine Perey or Mark Sage, Executive Director.

The deadline for this ballot is January 14, 2018 midnight Eastern.

	AREA 3rd Pitching call Introduction Mark Sage
Vote For	Member	Proposal	Presentation	Proposal Submission
1	PEREY Research & Consulting	Procedures for assessment/certification of worker safety when using wearable AR systems
2	PEREY Research & Consulting	Objective comparison of real world 3D object trackable capture procedures
3	Manufacturing Technology Centre	Proposed Framework for measuring Usability and Safety (Human Factors) of an Augmented Reality System/Application
4	Manufacturing Technology Centre	Integrating ‘Design for Augmented Reality’ methodologies as part of the product design process
5	Manufacturing Technology Centre	Development of a Cultural Assessment Tool to evaluate the impact of AR in the enterprise culture
6	Flatiron Solutions	AR Learning Aptitude
7	Flatiron Solutions	2D vs 3D Augmented Reality
	AREA 3rd Pitching call Next Steps Mark Sage

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 over 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.

Comments or Questions?

General inquiries may be directed to: [email protected]

Please consult the ISMAR website for more information.

In a previous article, we introduced the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), a member of the AREA that develops innovative techniques and processes for high-precision manufacturing. A subsidiary, the AMRC with Boeing, collaborates with a variety of research partners in areas such as informatics, automation, robotics and Augmented and Virtual Reality. Besides aerospace, the results of this research into manufacturing are used in the automotive, construction and other high-value industries.

Earlier this year, the AMRC opened the doors of its newest manufacturing facility, Factory 2050, a glass-walled reconfigurable factory in Sheffield Business Park. The facility investigates and showcases new technologies and processes relating to Industry 4.0, including projects to explore digitally assisted assembly technologies to fill a looming skills gap in the aerospace industry.

Augmented Reality in Digitally Assisted Assembly

The Digitally Assisted Assembly (DAA) project focuses on techniques for delivering work instructions to factory operators, including the use of optical projection AR and wearables. According to the AMRC’s digital manufacturing specialist, Chris Freeman, the project allows partner companies to experience visual work instructions through a number of delivery mediums. Research includes:

• Optimizing AR tracking methods for effectively getting a part’s position to generate a frame of reference.
• Designing user experiences for work instructions that are projected or overlaid onto a part within the user’s field of view. These include instructions that guide users for tasks such as gluing sequences, fastener insertion, inspection, wiring looms, complex routines and more. The aim of this research is to reduce cognitive load and optimize the user experience for delivery across a variety delivery modes (e.g., projection AR) and devices from tablets to smart glasses.
• Using location-based services to add contextualized task and environmental information in relation to the user’s position or progress within a task.

With the technology still in its infancy, one of the aims of DAA is to simply demonstrate what can be achieved with the technology. Although smart glasses and wearables aren’t proven or certified for use in manufacturing, they are nevertheless being baselined for further research and possible future production usage. The AMRC are currently following a strategy of first identifying the “low-hanging fruit” from the current state of hardware and software, which means that research associates want to find some of the most obvious and perhaps least expensive options up front.

Skype for HoloLens

Although the AMRC is studying a variety of smart glasses brands such as ODG and Vuzix, remote collaboration use cases with Skype for HoloLens is an interesting application for meeting the needs of certification processes. This use case includes methods for lineside support and remote verification to complement or replace expensive quality management activities requiring the presence of a supervisor. It may even include assistance by remote colleagues when assembly or repair problems are encountered.

Freeman notes that though such use cases aren’t spectacularly advanced in terms of tracking in comparison with other scenarios such as overlaying geometric 3D models on objects being assembled, they are nevertheless disruptive of current manufacturing practices.

Projecting Work Instructions on Large-Volume Objects

Projected Augmented Reality, sometimes referred to as “spatial Augmented Reality,” features one or more optical projectors projecting a beam of light onto a specially designed work surface or even on the parts being assembled. Thus work instructions are displayed directly on surfaces to guide operators. The DAA is currently researching methods for effectively using projection AR in conjunction with both fixtures and robotic arms in work cells.

For example, an operator assembles aircraft parts with the assistance of robots to present a part at a better angle than if it were lying on a work surface. A robotic arm can swivel or position the part as needed by the operator, and projected AR is able to guide operators through a series of specific manufacturing procedures.

Defining Success

As has been discussed in other industry contexts, return on investment on any new technology can be challenging to define (whether it’s for AR or any other). Typical ROI calculations seek to determine the amount of savings a project can bring and when that investment will pay off. In the case of AR, relevant questions include how to quantify the value of conceptualized data and geometries for its usage in performance metrics.

Further research into AR will eventually uncover such answers, but in the near term, human factors and ergonomic studies can also quantify the technology’s effectiveness. For example, the AMRC is currently conducting AR-related training scenarios to determine a variety of metrics such as memory retention and AR’s overall effectiveness, as well as usability and operator response.

Beyond Aerospace

Although research being conducted at Factory 2050 aims to advance the state of the art in aerospace manufacturing, many of the techniques and procedures derived by DAA and other projects will eventually be used in other industries, such as energy and construction. For example, assembly techniques for large-volume aerospace parts can also be applied to assembling prefabricated homes at a factory as part of modular building manufacture. Having recently opened its doors, it’s apparent that the new facilities of Factory 2050 will have an impact on both present and future manufacturing in multiple domains for many years to come.