Editorial
The Case for AR/VR Remote Work-from-Home
Remote work is a hot topic right now, as professionals around the world are currently working from home not by choice but out of necessity in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our towns and cities.
5 min read
The Top 5 Reasons To Attend EWTS 2020!
The Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit is several months away, yet every day new speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and attendees are signing up. With so many events throughout the year, it can be tricky to pick a conference experience worthy of your time and money, so let us help you make that decision easier. Here are the top 5 reasons you should attend EWTS 2020: The takeaways: Best-practice advice for adopting and scaling AR/VR and wearables from those effectively using the technology today. Hear the most mature (and successful) use cases from the likes of AGCO, Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, John Deere, Porsche, Walmart and Toyota; plus brand new use cases by Anglo American, AstraZeneca, Bayer, CBRE, HSBC, ConocoPhillips, H&M, REI, ThermoFisher Scientific, Travelers and more. Track record: 2020 will be the seventh EWTS. The show is really in a class of its own, with a carefully curated program and expo floor designed to give enterprise attendees everything they need to take back to their colleagues and superiors. The Fortune 500 speakers on stage are in the ‘trenches;” they’ve overcome challenges so you don’t have to and they’ve done the hard work of evangelizing the technology within their companies. Attendees return year after year, […]
2 min read
Wearable and Immersive Tech and the Female Workforce
In the three to four years since the release of Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, the number of VR headsets available on the market has grown. Millions of VR headsets have been sold and PwC expects an installed base of 55 million active VR users by 2022. I work in XR, organizing events and writing about AR and VR for my livelihood and yet, unlike some of my male peers, I purchased my very first piece of VR hardware just this year with the release of Oculus Go. Go was the first headset I put on that was relatively comfortable, and no wonder: Women were behind its design. Oculus’ Charmaine Hung, Caitlin Kalinowski, Rachel Franklin and Reina Shah put their past experiences with frustrating VR hardware into a physical design that’s more appealing to female VR users than its predecessor (content is another story). Go is untethered, relatively lightweight, a pleasing dove gray in color, and lined with the same material used in women’s bra straps. A world designed by and for men: The Oculus Rift, of course, provides a much more powerful, high-end VR experience than the Go. I’d love to own one (never mind the computer requirements), but […]
13 min read
All the Enterprise AR/VR News Out of CES 2020
There were a bunch of 8K TVs, cool car tech, robots, and even meatless pork, but it was augmented and virtual reality that stole the show at this year’s CES—especially enterprise AR/VR. Here are the top enterprise-related AR/VR announcements around last week’s show. (Sorry, we had to leave out Charmin’s VR-enhanced portable toilet.) Pimax Pimax claimed that its $1,299 Vision 8KX headset has finally entered mass production. The device essentially places the equivalent of two TVs next to each other, creating a 200-degree diagonal field of view. The company also announced a new $499 model called Artisan with lower specs. Check out this handy chart comparing Pimax’s 6 headsets. Bosch Bosch may have solved smart glasses’ battery life problem with its Light Drive system, which has 30% less depth permitting smaller, lighter glasses designs. The module consists of MEMS mirrors, optical elements, sensors and onboard processing. There’s no visible display or integrated camera. Bosch says it’s perfect for working all day, providing just-in-time, hands-free messages. Pico Pico announced its latest all-in-one VR headset for enterprise, the $700 Neo 2, which has 6degrees of freedom, head and controller tracking, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 platform inside. A second version, the […]
4 min read
The 2019 Enterprise XR Year In Review
THE YEAR XR WENT TO WORK IN ENTERPRISE We entered 2019 eagerly awaiting next-generation devices like HoloLens 2 and Google Glass EE 2. The year would deliver those devices and more, as the world’s biggest consumer tech companies entered the XR (AR, VR, MR) space and top names in consumer VR/MR turned their attention to enterprise. Major efforts to facilitate larger enterprise adoption and increased market cooperation would make 2019 the year that extended reality became a permanent fixture in enterprise. Companies that made the news for using XR in 2019: 2019 was a big year for the Oil & Gas industry. Shell (with Honeywell) announced expanded deployment of RealWear’s HMT-1Z1 and HMT-1 in a dozen countries. ExxonMobil launched a VR initiative tied to its major plant expansion project in Baton Rouge, which involved working with the local community college to create a VR training lab for students. Inside Exxon’s digital garage, oil and gas operators practiced skills in VR. Fortum, a Nordic energy company and power plant operator, began using Varjo VR-1 for control room training; and just this month we learned that BP is using Microsoft HoloLens for exploration and – you guessed it – training. In Automotive, […]
8 min read
Using XR to See Underground: Interview with Arcadis’ Allison Yanites
Before EWTS 2019 went down last month, I had the chance to interview one of the event’s thought leaders. Check out our interview with Allison Yanites, Immersive Technology Lead at Arcadis, the global natural and built asset consulting firm. Emily (BrainXchange): To begin, could you provide our readers with a little background on yourself and what you do at Arcadis? Also, when did you first encounter AR/VR? Allison: I am the Immersive Technology Lead at Arcadis North America. I am currently working to find different ways that augmented reality, virtual reality and other related technologies can improve customer experience, health and safety, and quality of life. Before this role at Arcadis, I worked as a geologist on environmental remediation projects: understanding subsurface conditions such as layers of soil and rock, if any groundwater or soil contamination is present, and if impacts are static or still moving below ground.A big piece of that work was creating 3D visualizations of subsurface data to help our clients and stakeholders better understand the full picture of what is happening below ground and help determine the next steps to clean up any contamination. A few years ago, our team developed a mixed reality visualization of […]
8 min read
All of the News Out of EWTS 2019
The 2019 Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit (EWTS) took place last week in Dallas. While it was the largest EWTS yet – with over 1,000 attendees and 60+ exhibitors – the show still managed to retain its characteristic intimacy. 2019 was also the most diverse year on the EWTS expo floor, which showcased a variety of hardware and software including AR/VR devices, exoskeletons, haptic gloves, and training platforms. Past and longtime EWTS attendees caught up, first timers were exposed to the top industrial AR/VR and wearable solutions, and everyone took away something to fuel the next year of innovation at work. While this event has always been about the end user, the immersive/wearable tech market has also grown here. This year, a number of exhibitors chose to announce new partnerships and launch products at EWTS. Here are all of the announcements that came out during the show: THIRDEYE ThirdEye launched its X2 mixed reality glasses, a lightweight enterprise AR headset retailing at $1950. What sets the X2 apart is its light weight of only 9.8 ounces (the smallest on the market). Designed for small, mid-sized and large-scale companies, the X2 is strictly for enterprise. (For comparison, HoloLens 2 costs $3500 and […]
3 min read
2019: The Year of the Big Pivot Towards Enterprise AR/VR
It’s a shame that AR/VR was overhyped in 2018 because in 2019 the technology is a fixture in enterprise.I’ll be blunt: Augmented, mixed and virtual reality were overhyped in 2018. While 2018 turned out not to be the year of AR/VR; please don’t roll your eyes when I tell you that 2019 is the year at least for enterprise, and of that I have no doubt.Here are a few of the signs: More than half of the announcements made at AWE USA 2019 (a staple on the AR/VR calendar) were enterprise-related Some of the world’s biggest consumer tech companies are now entering the immersive tech space, primarily eyeing enterprise The top names in consumer VR are also heavily courting the enterprise Why? Why are AR/VR hardware and software companies pivoting to enterprise? The answer is obvious: Because enterprise is where the money is. Both AR/VR technology providers and the world’s best-known companies (end users) are making/saving big. If you follow enterprise AR/VR, you’re no doubt familiar with Google (Glass), Microsoft, and PTC (Vuforia). Other longtime players include Atheer, Epson, HPE, LogistiVIEW, ScopeAR, RealWear, ThirdEye, Ubimax, Upskill and Vuzix. Qualcomm, Honeywell, and Toshiba (dynabook) have become fixtures on the scene, as […]
4 min read
All the Enterprise News Out of AWE USA 2019
One of the major takeaways from the 10th annual AWE last week was that enterprise is where the AR/VR market is growing. It was clear that there are serious – and real – enterprise applications providing ROI today to both large and small companies. AWE USA 2019 also saw a number of launches and updates from enterprise AR/VR solution providers. Catch up on all the enterprise news below: Atheer Atheer announced expanded support for devices that can control and provide input to smart glasses via gestures. The enhanced support for gestures – achieved with advanced machine learning tech – makes it easier to control more types of smart glasses outside of the limited group of smart glasses with dedicated depth sensors and enhances other modes of interaction. Learn more Bose In addition to being on track to have over one million BoseAR-enabled devices in consumer hands by the end of the year, Bose – an unlikely enterprise player – is building an industrial BoseAR wearable for loud, noisy and distracting work environments. Learn more at EWTS 2019 Sept. 17-19 in Dallas, Texas, where Bose’s Ilissa Bruser is speaking. Bose will exhibit at EWTS. Jujotech Jujotech’s latest solution Fusion AR with […]
5 min read
Avoid the Headache: IT Security in the Age of Wearables and AR/VR
As the modern industrial workplace becomes increasingly connected by IoT-enabled devices, including AR/VR glasses and headsets, wearables, robotics and smart machinery, the enterprise grows more vulnerable to potentially devastating cyberattacks, privacy intrusions and IP theft. Enterprise wearables promise to advance workplace safety, efficiency and profitability, but they also present novel dangers that can have disturbing consequences. A network breach can have devastating financial, legal and reputational consequences for not just the enterprise and its clients but also the general public in sectors like power generation and oil and gas. A changing threat landscape makes it difficult to evaluate risk, nonetheless the decision facing enterprise leaders is when, not if, they should adopt IoT technologies into their operations. Enterprises that are too cautious and hesitant in pursuing digital transformation will fall behind their competitors. Now and in the future, the success of integration and responsible management of connected technologies will depend on enterprise IT leadership to implement and govern appropriate security measures. At EWTS 2018 this past October in Austin, a common thread among the speakers was the importance of involving internal enterprise stakeholders responsible for safety and security as early in the pilot process as possible. It’s challenging enough for […]
6 min read
3 Key Takeaways for Fast-tracking AR in Enterprise
Last week, Seth Patin, CEO of LogistiVIEW, and Lance Anderson, CEO of Lance-AR, shared a new way to adopt augmented reality in your organization in the webinar “Fast-tracking AR for enterprise – From idea directly to deployment.” Here are three takeaways: Avoid pilot purgatory by “skipping” the pilot: At this point, five years after the initial release of Google Glass, we’re beyond pilots. AR has been proven in the enterprise space in hundreds of pilots across the industry spectrum. Start small, start real: Taking decisive action drives time to value. When the stakes are real, IT has to make it secure and employees have to acclimate. Don’t invite fear of change. Instead of trying to achieve maximum ROI and dramatic digital transformation, optimize the process that is the lowest-hanging fruit in order to set yourself up for incremental improvement, incremental adoption. Deploy on top of your existing operations: For your first deployment, don’t choose a use case requiring you to completely stop a process or one that requires significant AR visualization rework. For more valuable takeaways and to learn more, watch the full webinar available now on demand. The Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit (EWTS) is an annual conference dedicated to […]
2 min read
End Users Share Real Challenges of Wearable Tech Software
Finger Food Studios’ Graham Cunliffe leads a panel discussing the current state of the enterprise wearable market and the challenges of deploying business-ready wearable applications. Graham is joined by Caterpillar’s Jeff Lind, Southwest Airlines’ Chris Grubbs, Walmart’s Steven Lewis and United Technologies’ Peggy Wu. They discuss the considerations that help an organization determine appropriate software solutions. Common pain points include the scalability and portability of solutions across devices and the relative lack of off-the-shelf solutions. The panelists guide us through resolving functionality gaps for end users, the difficulties of establishing and navigating software partnerships with vendors, and the handling of data within the enterprise for seamless integration across digital platforms.
1 min read
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