In your profession, you’re one of those who are most aware of future technologies. The proof of this fact is that you have discovered Augmented Reality and decided that it’s sufficiently important to dedicate at least a few minutes or hours to getting oriented and staying informed about the trends.

That’s the first step. But you know enough not to believe everything you read or see in a YouTube video.

The next step, if you haven’t done so already, is to train yourself to separate the biggest hype from the facts. This is not easy, but you should be able to hit this milestone by attending industry events where AR is being demonstrated and you can put your hands on the products in action, even under highly controlled conditions. Visiting one or more of the AREA members in their offices or inviting them to visit your facility will be even more valuable.

You’ll see some mock ups and, if you ask tough questions, you will also see some of the weaknesses and begin to glimpse the complexity of the problems facing adoption of these technologies. Keep a log of these experiences you have with Augmented Reality and the impressions they leave on you.

If you really want to understand the strengths and weaknesses “up close” and have budget, you can develop a project or participate in a group project that focuses on a well-defined use case.

Share what you learn

Once you’ve seen and captured notes about more than 10 live demonstrations in your journal and have personally touched AR, you can begin to “translate” for others what you’re seeing and doing.

But, wait! The insights you’ve acquired could offer a strategic advantage to your company so, why would you share them? Even if you are thinking that you should keep what you’ve gathered to yourself, I encourage you to share because AR is more than just another new technology offering you or your group a competitive advantage. This is going to be a major crowd-sourced, multi-year project. When more people are looking into AR technology, it will improve faster than when only a few are focusing on and investing in it in isolation.

Once AR is good enough to be used weekly (or daily) in more than one use case, it is going to push operational performance to new levels. Then you will be able to use it to full advantage.

AR may become as transformational to your company and industry as the Web and mobile devices during your professional career. But it requires more than one or two examples and adopters in an industry. Reaching a threshold level of adoption in your industry will be necessary. And, to begin meaningful adoption there need to be a few experts. We need people like you to translate the theory and potential of AR in your industry to practice and reality.

I’ve found that I can translate for others what I’m observing by breaking it down into four interrelated topics: hardware, software, content and services. For over a decade I’ve used these four legs of the AR platform to organize projects, to review the history of AR and to capture current status.

In a series of AREA blog posts I am sharing developments I believe will be important in AR in 2017 using this simple framework.

Connecting the dots around us

One observer can’t see all the details of the entire AR landscape, certainly not in all industries where the technology will apply. Fortunately, the AREA is a network of very bright minds that are also looking forward as well as in other directions, at the same time.

Many AREA members are in the trenches of Augmented Reality take on a forward looking challenge when, at the end of each year, they begin preparing their forecast for the following year.

I hope that these posts will permit you to find your place, connect yourself and in your comments to these posts, you will compare and contrast what you’ve observed with my experience.

If we each take a few minutes, hours or a day in this last quarter of 2016 to connect our dots together we will all be better equipped to concretely plan for an exciting year ahead!

Next: What’s new for AR hardware in 2017?

The newest member of the AREA is one of the largest companies in the aerospace, defense, security, and technologies industry – and an Augmented Reality pioneer.

It’s Lockheed Martin. The Bethesda, Maryland-based company, which employs 98,000 people worldwide, joined the AREA as a Sponsor member in October. Lockheed Martin will be represented on the AREA board by Christi Fiorentini, a senior manufacturing applications engineer in Lockheed’s Marietta, Georgia Aeronautics organization.

Fiorentini traces Lockheed’s involvement in AR back about 15 years, when the company’s research and development team began exploring opportunities for the technology. Each of Lockheed Martin’s business units — Aeronautics, Space Systems, Missiles and Fire Control, and Rotary and Mission Systems – has experimented with the technology. About five years ago, Fiorentini’s unit, Aeronautics, began looking into augmented reality for remote subject matter expert applications.

“The technology then wasn’t quite up to par for use in a production environment, so it got put on the back burner,” recalled Fiorentini. “Around October last year, Aeronautics gained a new interest in the technology when we observed many start-ups and smaller businesses bringing AR to fruition.”

Lockheed Martin is seeking to incorporate augmented reality throughout the product lifecycle, from the initial design phase all the way through sustainment, with a heavy interest in manufacturing.

“We’ve been investigating the technology, going to conferences, and developing proofs of concept to build business cases, because we need to prove that this technology can work within our own boundaries so that we can make the investment,” said Fiorentini. “If we’re going to shift into this realm of technology, it’s a big move, a big status quo change, and so while I do believe the ROI is there, we need to show that it works on our actual use cases to convince our leadership to invest in it.”

That’s why Lockheed Martin joined the AREA.

“I think more people across our business are starting to realize the potential of the technology and so we’re trying to formalize our approach across the entire enterprise,” Fiorentini noted. “We’re working to bring individual players from our different business areas together and define a more strategic approach to exploit this technology. We have some upcoming pilots that we’re working on with some of the leading AR vendors, and we’re members of DMDII, the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute. As we engage more with these vendors and other enterprise members investigating this technology, we saw the AREA as being a good place to start pushing what we think should be best practice. We’re a big player in the aerospace and defense industry, so we’re looking at how we can use our influence to shape what the AR industry for enterprise is going to look like and the AREA is a great place to help convey that message.”

Due to the potential to radically change user engagement, Augmented Reality has received considerable and growing attention in recent months. Pokémon Go certainly has helped and, in turn, generated many expectations for the advancement of AR-based solutions. In fact, the game has provided the industry with a long overdue injection of mass appeal and as a result, significant investment from (and among) tech giants around the world.

From corner shops to large utility providers, the spike in popularity of this technology has everyone buzzing about how it could improve their business. The flexibility of implementation, from improving processes to stand-out marketing solutions, has also altered the expectations of these prospective clients as they seek personalized enterprise-level AR-based solutions. Consequently, the time has come for vendors and suppliers to consider a new model when it comes to managing customer expectations.

When deploying Augmented Reality solutions in an enterprise context, it is essential to build strong partnerships with your customers, and in many cases to take on the role of a trusted advisor. This becomes more important through the stages of delivering a project—starting with defining a proof of concept (POC) to implement bleeding edge solutions with operational teams and ultimately end users, who in fact are the actual users of the technology.

While the primary value of Augmented Reality systems is to allow for the contextual overlay of information to enable better decision making, the visual data overlay and various data sources and devices that trigger location sensors all come into play—converging in the form of a complex mesh. Vendors must note that partnerships are key to solving the pieces of this puzzle.

Service Delivery—Creating Value from the Complex Mesh

This complex mesh is what ultimately garners value as the assimilation of these technologies creates new and innovative social and business ecosystems and associated processes. When addressing enterprise adaptation, one must be aware of the following questions:

• How best can value be driven into workable solutions in an enterprise?
• How well does it integrate with existing legacy systems?
• Would new skills be required to introduce and manage the change?
• Does the solution deliver increased productivity or efficiencies, i.e., better utilization of resources or allow for better decision making through information?
• Does the solution enable new revenue models for the organization that are consistent with the existing product and service offerings?
• In turn, how does this solution affect the profitability of the organization?
• Last, but not least, is the business rationale clear for the implementation of such a solution?

The move towards customer-centric systems means that your customer (or your customer’s customer) is at the center of all decision making. This may be a shift from their existing system practices, meaning it’s even more critical that the chosen change management process be well aligned to the client’s corporate culture.

The Client’s Point of View—Questions to Ask When Going Beyond the POC

Some of the questions that vendors need to consider when it comes to implementing the solution beyond the POC are:

• What is changing?
• Why are we making the change?
• Who will be impacted by the change?
• How will they react to the change?
• What can we do to proactively identify and mitigate their resistance to the change?
• Will the solution introduce new business or revenue models?

Working as one with your customers through innovations to operations is a key factor for success. The complex mesh of AR, VR, IoT and Big Data technologies makes this even more critical as enterprises see an integration of their digital content, systems and processes.

It is essential to take a partnership mindset—where the Augmented Reality innovation solution is built both for and with the customer, and through a customer-implemented change management process—to quickly and easily create ROI as well as tangible, actionable outcomes.

Since its release on July 6th, Pokémon Go has become a global phenomenon—with downloads of the mobile app exceeding 75 million within the first three weeks. Many reviewers credit the game’s meteoric success to its innovative use of “Augmented Reality.”

To those of us in the enterprise AR community, of course, Pokémon Go is no more augmented reality than Atari’s 1972 “Pong” arcade game was table tennis. In Pokémon Go, the merging of the virtual and real worlds is confined to the projection of 2D monsters on real-life backgrounds. While it’s a novel effect for a mobile game, it barely scratches the surface of what Augmented Reality can do—or its tremendous potential for enterprises to achieve greater operational efficiencies.

Still, we at the AREA have to view the success of Pokémon Go as an important milestone in the development and adoption of AR for the following reasons:

• Pokémon Go is familiarizing the world with the basic concept of Augmented Rreality. Hopefully our members can spend less time having to explain what Augmented Reality is—or how it differs from Virtual Reality. Potential customers will already understand the basic concepts and be ready to learn more.
• Pokémon Go is proving that AR is no longer a futuristic concept. If an AR game is already a commercial success, can widespread enterprise AR solutions be far behind? Companies that had previously taken a wait-and-see approach to AR may now be more motivated to explore the possibilities for their businesses.
• Pokémon Go is proving that people are engaged and excited by the technology. The game makes it vividly clear that AR is a powerful and compelling tool people enjoy using. That enthusiasm can only help fuel the growth and development of the AR market.

Many media outlets and bloggers agree and are driving the conversation in our direction. Just look at some of these recent headlines:

• “Is Pokémon Go Really Augmented Reality?”
• “How Pokémon Go Took Augmented Reality Mainstream”
• “Why Pokémon Go is a Game Changer for Augmented Reality and Marketers”
• “Pokémon Go is Nice, But Here’s What *Real* Augmented Reality Will Look Like”

Our challenge now is to leverage the Pokémon Go phenomenon to accelerate the adoption of AR in the enterprise. That means taking the opportunity—as the AREA members Gaia Dempsey of DAQRI and Scott Montgomerie of Scope AR have done recently—to make sure inquiring media outlets understand that the impact of enterprise AR will be even more significant and lasting than the current Pokémon Go craze.

To find out more about the AREA contact Mark Sage, Executive Director.

As the incoming executive director of the AR for Enterprise Alliance, I was very excited to attend my first Augmented World Expo and to meet some of the 34 members of the AREA.

AWE is one of the largest and best-attended events worldwide about Augmented Reality, and typically hosts thousands of attendees and hundreds of companies. This year’s event was no exception and did not disappoint. I was pleased to meet a high number of innovative AR companies from the AREA provider segment and attend demos of their groundbreaking solutions. It’s clear to me that AR in enterprise is here to stay and the AREA occupies a strategic position in growing the entire ecosystem to the benefit of everyone.

Benefits of AR in Enterprise

The event gave me the opportunity to speak with a range of attendees from many companies and markets. It was exciting to be asked so many different and interesting questions on many topics and one conclusion that came up time and again was the importance of AR in enterprise. The potential benefits and savings of AR is getting the attention of C-suite rather than just the innovation and technology teams. The trajectory towards a real reduction in time, costs and errors is a critical for companies as they look to streamline their business and increase the return on investment.

Enterprise AR Track at AWE ‘16

The focus on enterprise was supported by an impressive number of customers and providers presenting their experiences during the Enterprise AR track—sponsored by the AREA. I learned a lot from all the presentations but it was also instructive to listen to the members of the AREA’s customer segment. They were insightful and provided a unique perspective on the benefits and issues they experienced when implementing AR solutions within their companies. It’s clear that there are many lessons to learn and the AREA is well placed to help the AR ecosystem make effective and informed decisions based on shared knowledge and experience.

The AREA at AWE

At AWE we experienced a constant stream of people visiting our stand and asking questions. Many expressed appreciation of the AREA’s work and benefits achieved for the ecosystem. A number of them even mentioned regularly visiting the AREA website when trying to find information about AR, and that the AREA’s content was insightful and informative.

For those who hadn’t heard of us, it was useful to discuss our mission, benefits, membership options and growth. Much interest was expressed and I hope new members will join based on these discussions.

AWE was my first real experience meeting the enterprise AR community and it was a very useful and insightful experience. I look forward to following up with the many attendees I met and help drive the AREA’s development and its role in supporting this nascent ecosystem.

AREA Members Meeting

After AWE, we held an AREA Members Meeting in Palo Alto, California, on June 3. It was an honor to chair my first such meeting. AREA in-person meetings occur around three times a year and they’re a great opportunity to meet with members, discuss progress made, define future strategic plans to further develop the ecosystem and have some fun.

Thanks to Atheer for hosting the event at the beautiful Palo Alto Art Center.

The morning agenda items included:

• Progress updates from the various AREA committees
• Upcoming events in which the AREA can support its members

The afternoon included various brainstorming sessions around the content and the way the AREA positions itself to potential new members.

The day was full of insightful and interesting discussions, and from a personal perspective it was great to interact with many leaders and understand how we can work together as an alliance to support and grow the ecosystem and provide thought leadership to possible new customers and providers of AR.

If you are interested in joining the AREA, please complete this form.

This year’s Laval Virtual conference showcased innovations in Augmented Reality and introduced wide-ranging discussions on the topic of Augmented Realty in enterprise. On the second day, AREA board member Christine Perey hosted a round table session on the use of Augmented Reality to promote productivity. Participants included Manuel Asselot (Robocortex), Sebastian Knoedel (DIOTA), Marie-Julie Pecoult (Diginext), Pontus Blomberg (3D Studio Blomberg), Yann Froger (EON Reality) and Jim Novack (Talent Swarm).

Olivier Larroque of Capgemini provided his impressions and summarized the essential questions and answers discussed by the invited panelists in a post on the blog of RA’Pro, an AREA member. The original post in French is translated and provided in English here.

Which industry currently leads the way with Augmented Reality in Europe?

Among the panel participants there was agreement that aerospace is a leading industry. Adoption of AR in aerospace is driven by reuse of 3D content in its product life cycle management (PLM). AR use cases are most recommended, for example, where they can overcome a technician’s lack of experience in performing a task, or where they can assist in risky or complex operations. Such use cases are being applied in a highly regulated environment where only one error on the assembly line can cause the loss of an aircraft or satellite.

What are characteristics of use cases that are most compelling for investors?

Ideally, you should identify critical points of a business process where human errors generate the greatest cost. The return on investment (ROI) on AR as reported by companies such as Boeing and Newport News Shipbuilding shows how crucial it is for an enterprise to embark on such a project.

Boeing conducted a comparison of three different guidance methods on a satellite assembly procedure of 50 steps using instructions:

• On a stationary PC
• On a table (PDF)
• Overlaid in the field of view (AR) using a tablet

The results were dramatic: during first-time assembly, the AR-enhanced tablet users with no prior experience with the steps committed one error, while those using the PC committed eight errors. During the second time following the steps, those using AR committed no errors.

Which prerequisites should be in place before a company implements AR?

Optimization of existing 3D content for Augmented Reality is actually more important than products or toolchains. Maintaining a flexible and modular approach in adopting these new technologies provides the ability to move among varying hardware and software products and packages, and helps organizations to remain a step ahead of the market.

What do you think of smart glasses?

The first step in adopting Augmented Reality is to use an AR-enhanced tablet for testing and then migrate to smart glasses if appropriate.

Smart glasses, of course, have compelling features (hands-free working, portability, etc.), but one should avoid falling into “shiny object syndrome,” or the desire to adopt technology at any price without first examining all its ins and outs. It’s essential to study what’s actually required, as well as the technical limitations.

What are the implications of adopting AR as a disruptive innovation?

The implications are threefold:

• Social resistance to change: unions and conservative individuals within the company may be reluctant to change if AR is seen as an aspect of robotics. Communication should be oriented to assisting humans and what they do best. Moreover people, the employees, should be included at the heart of the discussions.
• Enhancing procedures for Augmented Reality: start with simple tasks in workbooks or manuals. AR takes advantage of our visual processing and operators tend to instinctively apply it to minimize errors as it superimposes instructions to be followed in real time.
• Dealing with technological realities: over-the-top special effects in concept videos have instilled high expectations for AR. We should rather address and educate the customer about the technology’s limitations in terms of hardware (field of view, tracking, etc.) and software. The technology should be thoroughly tested to ensure it matches the use cases that the customer is targeting.

If the best hardware is not currently available, when is the best time to get started with AR?

Ideally right away. AR adoption is a long process with many different aspects (social, technological, security, etc.) that involves deep collaboration among all domains of an enterprise (operational, management, legal, etc.).

Conclusion

Augmented Reality will allow companies to approach the way their employees work more visually, with a new way of representing objects, learning new tasks and transmitting knowledge. Recall the progress made between the first MS-DOS screen and what we have today with personal computers. With new devices such as smart glasses and other products like Microsoft HoloLens, the DAQRI Smart Helmet or Magic Leap, the changes will also be very dramatic.

If you only have a few days to get up to speed about the use of Augmented Reality to improve workplace productivity or safety, then you’ve come to the right website. You’ll quickly pick up the concepts and a working vocabulary of AR by browsing our site and watching our webinars. You’ll also learn about our members, leaders dedicated to providing AR-enabling technologies and solutions who offer a wealth of knowledge and experience.

But, for most people immersing themselves in this exciting new discipline, surfing the web isn’t sufficient. Let’s face it: enterprise AR experiences always involve a physical world component.

Putting hands on the technologies while they’re in use, to see different options and meet people in person, are critical to tapping the potential that enterprise AR offers.

AWE Brings the AR Industry Together

The upcoming Augmented World Expo (AWE) on June 1 and 2, 2016, in Santa Clara, California, is an important event for AREA members. Over four thousand AR practitioners and enthusiasts will experience the latest technologies when gathering important data for decisions on behalf of their companies and projects.

Organized annually since 2010 by industry mover-and-shaker Ori Inbar and his team, the event has both a conference and a trade show. These bring together customers, vendors, researchers, investors and many others who are important to the continued expansion of this industry in a variety of formats. 

Whether you’re looking for something specific or just exploring, AWE provides an opportunity to get to know the experts, such as AREA members, and to try out the latest Augmented Reality technologies and products first hand.

AREA Members at AWE

The AREA and its members will be leading and speaking during the AWE 2016 enterprise AR track of sessions, as well as demonstrating solutions on the exhibition floor.  

In order to provide the greatest impact to our diverse audiences, we’ve divided the enterprise AR sessions into vendor-neutral insights and recommendations from a range of technology providers on June 1, followed by customer case studies and testimonials on June 2.

Chaired by Paul Davies, Technical Fellow at Boeing, an AREA founding sponsor member, our June 1 speakers will provide a lot of practical advice based on their experience across many industries. Since it is frequently the first major barrier to success, the day will begin with speakers sharing recommendations about how to select and prioritize enterprise AR use cases.

Then AREA members will offer their suggestions for how to prepare and deliver digital content for enterprise AR experiences. In this session, I will provide the results of a research project on different AR authoring platforms. David Marimon of Catchoom will describe the results of recent studies with 3D sensing platforms for real world object recognition and Alex Hill, CTO of CN2 Technologies will offer guidance on how to optimize 3D assets for use in AR experiences.

The rest of the day promises great talks on enterprise AR wearable technology strategies and the use of AR as a human interface to Industrial Internet of Things.

On June 2, Bob Meads, CEO of iQagent, another AREA founding sponsor member, will chair three hours of sessions during which customers will share their experiences working in pilot and proof-of-concept projects. These sessions will feature case studies and testimonial presentations. The afternoon will offer round tables and panel discussions with customers, and we’ll hear the results of recent projects and lessons learned throughout the day.

AREA members will also be exhibiting in record numbers and many will have their booths in the AR for Enterprise Pavilion.

Will you be there? Stop by AREA member booths to introduce yourself to us and let us know how we can help you to get the greatest value from attending AWE 2016 and your enterprise AR investments.

In a previous post we described how, by developing a new framework that leverages Augmented Reality, IoT, social networking and advances in hardware, the members of the European SatisFactory consortium seek to increase productivity in manufacturing.

After a period of design and development, SatisFactory solutions and technologies will be validated at three pilot manufacturing facilities.

Each of the three pilot sites corresponds to a different industry:

• Chemical Processes: The Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute (CPERI) is a non-profit research and technological development organization based in Thessaloniki, Greece.
• Industrial Automation: Comau S.p.A is a global supplier of industrial automation systems and services based in Turin, Italy.
• Energy: Systems Sunlight S.A. headquartered in Athens, Greece, is a manufacturer of energy storage and power systems for industrial and consumer applications.

Installation and validation of the SatisFactory framework at each of the sites is an iterative process, with Augmented Reality devices (with technology partner GlassUp) and other technologies to be implemented in the coming months.

While this article focuses on plans for Augmented Reality at each of the three pilot sites, there are many more technological aspects bringing together innovations for streamlining efficiency in the factory. A publicly available project report sheds light on the use cases described below.

Continuous Production in Chemical Processing

CPERI is an institute that performs research and provides services to industries related to chemical engineering, energy and materials. CPERI is an ideal site for testing and improving continuous processes. In contrast to batch manufacturing of goods, continuous processes for chemical, pharmaceutical, food processing and other types of plants impose different challenges. As the facilities use equipment that must run continuously, any downtime can be costly. When shutdowns occur, incomplete products must often be disposed of, and the corresponding infrastructure (e.g., pipes, vessels, etc.) thoroughly cleansed of remaining materials.

Startup and shutdown procedures must be validated and documented to prevent all unwanted impacts. Typically such procedures require several hours to complete. CPERI is pioneering Augmented Reality in a use case for plant startup procedures, in which an operator using an AR device completes a task normally requiring many sequential steps done in several hours for starting up a plant.

The AR-enabled system incorporates a human-machine interface to display real time feedback to the operator from the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) automation system and other process control systems. Without AR, such tasks must be performed by an experienced operator referencing a manual, while the new AR solution proposes a workflow with reduced attention switching and can be performed by someone with less prior experience.

Additional use cases for AR are being designed and discussed with other SatisFactory pilot sites. CPERI, along with its partners, are also authoring a set of standard operating procedures for enabling and using Augmented Reality to improve productivity and compliance in continuous manufacturing and other chemical industrial processes.

Discrete Manufacturing in Heavy Industry

Part of the Fiat Group, Comau provides industrial automation systems for manufacturing in the automotive, aerospace, steel and petrochemical industries. The company specializes in:

• Body welding equipment for a variety of vehicle types
• Manufacturing systems for engine powertrain components
• Robotic systems for a range of manufacturing use cases

Comau is developing an Augmented Reality-enhanced system to help a user assemble a robot wrist, a process that normally requires four hours and over 290 individual steps to complete. The proposed AR solution, to be provided on a device that’s either fixed or wearable (e.g., smart glasses), uses animations that appear over the real world to guide the technician through steps to complete the task in less time and with fewer errors than existing methods.

As with CPERI, the AR solution will eventually be integrated into the site’s IT infrastructure, including warehouse management, enterprise resource planning and manufacturing execution systems to provide real time data and support.

Remote operator assistance and technician training are other use cases being evaluated. Operators will be able to request live help and collaboration from remote experts for tasks, as well as choose training scenarios from online repositories for on-the-spot examples and guidance. Comau is also evaluating how AR can be used to record processes performed for verification and future training purposes.

Augmented Reality in Power System Manufacturing

Systems Sunlight’s integrated energy products span a range of industries from vehicles and consumer electronics to utilities and defense. The company operates a manufacturing facility where assembly lines produce batteries, transforming raw materials into ready-to-use products. Battery production requires continuous monitoring of variables such as cell temperature, which is measured with a thermal camera.

Augmented Reality is being evaluated for producing “motive batteries” for powering machinery: in a two-hour assembly process of six major steps, an operator places battery cells in a metal box whose sequence depends on battery type. The cells are then connected by means of a battery string and later checked whether they need additional electrolyte filling. They are then sealed with regular or water-filling plugs. In the next two stages, the terminal plugs and labels are installed and the batteries are checked for quality. Finally, the batteries are transported to a warehouse for dispatch to customers.

Systems Sunlight will implement Augmented Reality guidance on a fixed or wearable device so the technician can work hands free. Besides the expected benefits that animated steps overlaid on the field of view can provide, the company anticipates the technology will increase the overall motivation of technicians and operators. They plan to measure this increase with surveys after the conclusion of pilot testing.

If the pilot is successful, the company will explore use of Augmented Reality on further production lines and create a training system combining AR and gamification, along with quizzes to reinforce knowledge.

A Template for Manufacturing Efficiency

The lessons learned in these three pilot project sites will allow the SatisFactory solutions to be fine-tuned and demonstrate their value for the manufacturing sector.

In 2017, they will be made available to the European manufacturing industry to improve efficiency through novel interaction and collaboration technologies. The solutions also aim to improve the quality of life and overall working experience of factory operators, and mark a major step forward in European manufacturing competitiveness.

Fulfilling customer orders at a warehouse, or order picking, can be costly. A well-known study on warehouse management cited the typical costs of order picking as being nearly 20% of all logistics costs and up to 55% of the total cost of warehousing. The use of technology to streamline order picking offers an important opportunity to reduce cost.  

While great strides have been made in automating warehouse processes, customer expectations also continue to rise. For example, Amazon offers same-day delivery in many US metropolitan areas and this is becoming a standard elsewhere. Increasing fulfillment and delivery speeds may result in increased errors that are not caught prior to shipment.

Augmented Reality can significantly increasing order picking efficiency. An AR-enabled device can display task information in the warehouse employee’s field of view. Logistics companies such as DHL, TNT Innight and others have been collaborating with providers of software and hardware systems to test the use of Augmented Reality in their warehouses.

A recent study by Maastricht University conducted in partnership with Realtime Solutions, Evolar and Flos brings to light the impact smart glasses can have on order fulfillment. The research sought to:

• Confirm prior research that smart glasses improve efficiency compared with paper-based approaches
• Study usability, required physical and mental effort and potential empowerment effects of the technology in a real world environment
• Assess the impact of an individual’s technology readiness on previously introduced performance and well-being measures

Design of the Study

Sixty-five business students at the University of Maastricht participated in a three-day study conducted in a controlled environment. Study participants were given instructions to pick individual items from bins containing items and place them into appropriate customer bins:

• One group picked items from 28 bins using item IDs printed on paper and then matched those to IDs on customer bins. The study assessed order picking efficiency by measuring the ability and speed of participants to place the items in the correct customer bins.
• The other group used AR-enabled smart glasses to scan barcodes in item bins and follow the displayed instructions to place them in the customer bins.

The researchers evaluated metrics such as:

• Performance measures of error rates and picking times per bin
• Health and psychological measures such as heart rate variability, cognitive load and psychological empowerment
• Usability measures such as perceived ease of use
• “Technology readiness” on a scale measuring personal characteristics such as optimism for, and insecurity with new technologies

Faster with Smart Glasses

The researchers found that smart glasses using code scanners permitted users to work 45% faster than those using paper-based checklists, while reducing error rates to 1% (smart glasses users made ten times less picking errors than the control group).

The smart glasses group also expended significantly less mental effort to find the items with the same heart rate variability as the group using paper.

Overall the usage of smart glasses empowers users and engenders positive attitudes toward their work and the technology: in comparison with the group following checklists, they felt the successful completion of tasks was more attributable to their own behavior. This corroborates other studies in efficiency gains such as this one, and demonstrates the level of impact Augmented Reality can have in the workplace.

You can read about more Augmented Reality research from Maastricht University and other university partners at this portal.

In a blog post last month, Giuseppe Scavo explored the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the growing trend of connected devices in factories. Smart devices and sensors can bring down production and maintenance costs while providing data for visualization in Augmented Reality devices.

Connecting AR and IIoT requires applied research. In this article we’ll look at the EU-sponsored SatisFactory project, which is focusing on employee satisfaction in factories by way of technology introduction.

Innovation in Industrial Production

In 2014, the European Union launched Horizon 2020, a seven-year research and innovation program (ending in 2020) dedicated to enhancing European competitiveness. Horizon 2020 is a partnership between public and private entities and receives nearly $90 billion in public funds. As the program’s website describes, Horizon 2020 aims to drive smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs.

Within this push is the Factories of the Future initiative, a roadmap providing a vision and plan for adding new manufacturing technologies to the European production infrastructure. Objectives of Factories of the Future initiative include:

• Increasing manufacturing competitiveness, sustainability, automation
• Promoting energy-efficient processes, attractive workplaces, best practices and entrepreneurship
• Supporting EU industrial policies and goals

To meet these objectives, ten partner companies and institutions from five European countries founded the SatisFactory consortium in 2015. SatisFactory is a three-year project aiming at developing and deploying technologies such as Augmented Reality, wearables and ubiquitous computing (e.g., AR-enabled smart glasses, etc.) and customized social communication and gamification platforms for context-aware control and adaptation of manufacturing processes and facilities.

SatisFactory-developed solutions seek higher productivity and flexibility, job education of workers, incident management, proactive maintenance and above all a balance between workers’ performance and satisfaction. The solutions are currently being validated at three pilot sites (one small- and two large-scale industrial facilities) pending release for use at industrial facilities throughout Europe.

Industry 4.0

SatisFactory’s vision of Industry 4.0 includes a framework with four sets of technologies:

• Smart sensors and data analytics for collecting and processing multi-modal data of all types. The results of this real time data aggregation will include diagnosing and predicting production issues, understanding the evolution of the workplace occupancy model (e.g., balancing numbers of workers per shift) and enhancing context-aware control of production facilities (e.g., semantically enhanced knowledge for intra-factory information concerning production facilities, re-adaptation of production facilities, etc.).
• Decision support systems for production line efficiency and worker safety and well-being. These systems can take many forms, ranging from Augmented Reality for human visualization of data to systems for incident detection and radio frequency localization.
• Tools for collaboration and knowledge sharing, including knowledge bases and social collaboration platforms. Augmented Reality for training by remote instructors will provide flexibility and increase engagement. Collaborative tools also allow employees to exchange information and experiences, and these tools are combined with learning systems.
• Augmented Reality and gamification can increase engagement. SatisFactory will use tools previously developed by consortium partners and, in pilot projects, explore use of smart glasses and human-machine interfaces. Interaction techniques and ubiquitous interfaces are also being explored.

Pilot Sites

SatisFactory solutions are being tested at the pilot sites of three European companies:

• The Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute (CPERI) is a non-profit research and technological development organization based in Thessaloniki, Greece. The company provides a test site for continuous manufacturing processes.
• Comau S.p.A is a global supplier of industrial automation systems and services and is based in Turin, Italy. The company provides manufacturing systems for the automotive, aerospace, steel and petrochemical industries.
• Systems Sunlight S.A. is headquartered in Athens, Greece, and produces energy storage and power systems for industrial, advanced technology and consumer applications.

In the next post, we’ll look at activities at the sites and how the project is applying Augmented Reality at the different production facilities.