The Industrial Augmented Reality Blog | Spectral TMS

What is Augmented Reality and what is at stake?

Written by Spectral TMS | Apr 30, 2020 4:00:13 PM

Often confused with virtual reality, Augmented Reality is a technology that will spice up your reality by superimposing digital elements. This superimposition can be done via AR glasses (Microsoft Hololens for example) or via your smartphone.

Plus concrètement, lorsque vous mettrez les Hololens de Microsoft, vous aurez dans votre champ de vision des éléments digitaux avec lesquelles vous allez pouvoir interagir. Via votre smartphone, le même processus se mettra en place mais cette fois-ci à travers votre écran. Ces premiers éléments nous amènent maintenant à réfléchir aux informations que l’on va mettre en avant et donc aux usages que l’on va faire de la Réalité Augmentée.

 

1. Uses of AR

These uses can be playful and aimed at the general public, through games and social networks (Pokemon Go, Snapchat), but can also be aimed at professional populations: From the salesperson to the technician, there are many cases of Augmented Reality applications and the impact of this technology is still underestimated.

A sales representative will be able to use Augmented Reality to allow a customer to visit his new kitchen before work begins, while a maintenance operator will be able to put on a pair of AR goggles to be guided step by step through a complex operation in front of an industrial machine.

This is what Spectral TMS offers: an Augmented Reality solution for industry professionals to guide maintenance operators in every step of their industrial processes. The objective here is to reduce the human error rate to 0, to make operators more autonomous and responsible, or to speed up the completion time of certain tasks.

2. Creation and implementation of content

Two approaches exist today with Augmented Reality.

Complex scenarios can be created in Augmented Reality for extremely precise use. This kind of approach will require 3D modeling or development and will be very time consuming. It is very important to be sure of what you are trying to do. On the other hand, one should not have any expectations regarding the scaling or agility of the scenario. 

A second, much faster and more operational approach exists. Some solutions provide their users with tools to quickly create Augmented Reality scenarios in order to test, modify and make them usable by an entire population. 

This is what we do at Spectral TMS by providing the user with a SaaS platform (Spectral STUDIO) accessible from your web browser, where you can easily create your content (your maintenance range for example) before using it through the Augmented Reality glasses. 30 minutes are necessary to create a scenario and make it exploitable on a machine. Imagine all the use cases you will be able to test!

3. Deploying an Augmented Reality solution

It is important to know what difficulties you are currently experiencing that can be corrected with the help of Augmented Reality. To do so, please do not hesitate to meet with us to discuss them together. We will then be able to position the technology and the Spectral TMS solution on a sample of these difficulties in order to test the relevance of the solution with your teams and managers during a pilot phase. This will also allow you to validate a whole panel of returns on investment that will be mandatory for you to deploy. 

When we validate these different elements together, you will be able to replicate the work done on other perimeters and thus bring Augmented Reality technology to the scale of your business, such as the Spectral TMS solution.

Our team remains at your entire disposal in these times of lockdown to accompany you on your projects. 

If you want to know more about Augmented Reality, contact our experts.