Technology solutions available on the market today truly have the capability to empower you and your organization; especially during times like these where communication and collaboration are vital to your success.

Today, a high-performance workforce requires expensive training programs, equipment maintenance, travel budgets, and support systems. Yet, many are facing problems due to limited travel, social distancing, and enforced remote working policies.

Vuforia Chalk creates a new way to tackle these business requirements, and even better yet, we are offering free access to Vuforia Chalk for a limited time to help Manufacturing and Service organizations cope with the COVID-19 Crisis.

Vuforia Chalk Free Access Program

The Vuforia Chalk Free Access Program is available right now through August 31st, 2020. Fill out the form at the top of our Vuforia Chalk webpage.

Once you’ve filled out the form you’ll be auto-enrolled in our Vuforia Chalk Quick Start Program – a free consultative guide to get you started with the software on the right foot.

What is Vuforia Chalk?

Vuforia Chalk is an easy-to-use, powerful remote assistance support application that allows your workforce to collaborate in real-time, from anywhere. This application combines real-time video with advanced AR technology to create a simple and intuitive user-experience that anybody can use.

Why Vuforia Chalk?

The Vuforia chalk app is a great entry point for Augmented reality, especially when it comes to existing and long-standing workforces.

Why? Because it is simple and intuitive to use. This application requires a minimal amount of training, and doesn’t involve the use of specialized equipment, like many other Augmented Reality applications on the market today.

With Vuforia Chalk users are able to use mobile devices they already own today, meaning your most experienced minds are accessible anytime, anywhere.

How Vuforia Chalk enhances remote collaboration

Vuforia Chalk lets your employees share a live view of their workspace with an expert, or co-worker, allowing your workforce to easily connect for support or training.

With Chalk, simple instructions can help your team solve complex problems quickly and effectively while reducing costs and increasing technician efficiency.

The AR application also allows both users with the ability to draw on the screen directly from their mobile device to provide instructions as if they were right there face-to-face.

With Vuforia augmented reality, your annotations stick exactly where they are drawn, even when you move around as you work. In fact, you can even pause the live view to draw easy to follow, multi-step instructions.

Chalk is ideal for service and training, as well as other forms of collaboration too.

It makes it easy for your team to work together or give feedback from almost any place in the world – saving you time and money.

Having your best minds on a job remotely allows your organization to:

With Chalk’s simple learning curve, organizations are now able to implement an AR strategy into their business quickly and effectively, allowing even the aging workforce to be able to learn to use the tool efficiently.

Start using Vuforia Chalk for Free

Get enrolled in PTC’s Vuforia Chalk Free Access Program by filling out the form on our Vuforia Chalk webpage – which will auto-enroll you in our Vuforia Chalk Quick Start Program. Here’s the guide for reference to see what to expect.

AR and IoT are beginning to transform the way organizations are interacting in their industrial environments.

With the ability to integrate technology everywhere, products, processes, and people now have the ability to be connected like never before, allowing enterprises to drive product and service differentiation and promote operational effectiveness, workforce productivity, and unmatched quality.

Some might refer to this concept as the idea of digital transformation…but what does that really even mean? This article breaks it all down for you.

Digital Transformation with IoT and AR.

Today, innovative Augmented Reality tools have the ability to connect with powerful IoT data while working seamlessly in a service and training environment. With a mobile device or AR headset, technicians can easily learn to work in tandem drastically reducing training time and downtime simultaneously.

To better understand a concept of ‘digital transformation’, I’ll walk you through a real-life scenario involving one of our customers.

For this specific customer, the combination of AR and IoT has drastically improved the efficiency of their operations.  

With the use of an AR application, our customer is able to provide their off-site workers with a digital model of one of their products immediately.  

Placed alongside the digital model of their product, they are also able to see real-time data from the physical product that is off-site or working in the field.

This is possible because their AR experience also leverages a connection with their IoT platform, known as ThingWorx.

Their ThingWorx IoT platform connects to their disparate data systems, such as their ERP and CRM systems. It also connects to their PLM software, which provides them with the ability to pull a configuration from their PLM software, known as Windchill. This allows them to showcase unique product information, such as the VIN, model, customer and purchase information.

By having this data available and in context, remote technicians are better informed and empowered to make the best decisions possible.

As technicians launch their AR experience, they are able to see step by step instructions on how to repair or service the specific product.

They are also able to see warnings and replay steps that are integrated into the AR experience so they can be assured they are working in a safe environment without missing any procedures.

With the additional use of Vuforia Chalk, a remote video assistance app, employees are also able to instantly access remote subject matter experts or SMEs who can answer questions related to the experience and interact with the experience directly by drawing on the screen.

Finally, with time tracked throughout the experience, this service data can then be sent back to their ThingWorx IoT platform to assess performance, training, and to improve the CAD design leader.

By combining the use of AR and IoT, training and servicing is no longer hindered by traditional learning for our customer. Instead, their technicians are able learn from an experience that is enriched with data and context.

By leveraging ThingWorx, our customer is able to merge the digital and physical worlds of service providing their organization with an efficient and productive work environment.

This is the idea of digital transformation.

Curious how digital transformation might apply to your organization? We would love to have a conversation. Click the banner below to learn more.

Evaluating potential Augmented Reality (AR) solutions for manufacturing can quickly become overwhelming when you consider testing out product trials and going over pricing details.

A new IDC Report, How AR Drives Real-World Gains in Service, Training, Sales & Marketing, and Manufacturing, states, “AR technology is here and now, and companies of all shapes and sizes are utilizing it to change the way work gets done and to drive better outcomes.”

This article talks about the top proven industrial Augmented Reality Solutions and exactly what they can do for your industry.

The most widely used platform for AR development: Vuforia Engine

Today, over half a million developers have chosen the advanced performance and cross-platform reach of Vuforia Engine, making it the most widely used platform for AR development on the planet.

Why is this considered to be the most flexible tool for AR development? Because it delivers robust and precise AR experiences in a variety of environments. This AR Engine is a powerful cross-platform software enabling branded AR experiences for both new and existing applications to be deployed in leading app stores.

It lets developers freely build branded AR experiences for new or existing applications and supports AR devices such as phones, tablets, headsets, and smart glasses across leading platforms to reach the largest audience.

By using Vuforia Engine, developers can easily add advanced computer vision functionality to Android, iOS, and UWP apps, to create AR experiences that realistically interact with objects and the environment.

The Vuforia Engine Library also contains technical documentation to help developers be successful as they create AR applications.

With Vuforia Engine, AR developers can harness best-in-class computer vision capabilities, to detect and launch a variety of target types. This AR engine also is equipped with broad support for leading modeling platforms and user applications.

Features and capabilities of Vuforia Engine

Vuforia Engine comes with many distinguishing features and capabilities. These include:

 Discover all of the unique features of Vuforia Engine here.

What are Vuforia Engine applications used for?

Vuforia Engine AR applications are best used for:

The best AR Authoring Solution: Vuforia Studio

Vuforia Studio is an Augmented reality authoring solution that lets you quickly build scalable AR experiences. Vuforia Studio is an augmented reality authoring solution that helps you rapidly build AR experiences.

Vuforia Studio enables efficient, cost-effective authoring of industrial AR without the need for in-depth programming or skilled programmers.

This AR solution helps designers, engineers, and technical publication end users author and publish scalable AR experiences that transform manufacturing, service, and training processes.

You can now experience features from the tool that have a robust and visual interface – easy for design file importing and ubiquitous viewer support.

How does Vuforia Studio work?

Vuforia Studio is a drag-and-drop authoring environment that enables industrial content creators to use existing 3D CAD and animated sequences.

This AR authoring tool leverages real-time IoT and business systems data and allows users to access and view experiences from a single app.

Its simple, easy-to-use drag and drop interface allows content creators with no prior coding knowledge to get up and running quickly.

Vuforia Studio features and capabilities

Distinguishing AR features and capabilities that come with Vuforia Studio include:

What are Vuforia Studio applications used for?

Vuforia Studio is best used for:

The Best AR Remote Assistance Software: Vuforia Chalk

Vuforia Chalk is a powerful AR remote assistance and guidance application that helps experts and technicians solve problems more effectively.

You can think of it as an easy to deploy, mobile-based guidance and collaboration AR tool.

Vuforia Chalk enables pairs of mobile device users to collaborate around a shared view of objects and environments, with smart 3D annotation capabilities.

This allows senior experts to virtually share knowledge with junior colleagues and removes geographical barriers to collaboration. Picture this – if you’re a service technician in Nebraska, you can be helping someone located in Oklahoma just with the power of your fingers on your mobile device using the Vuforia Chalk app.

Vuforia Chalk combines advanced augmented reality with real-time communications to connect a field technician with an expert so that the expert can see and discuss the situation in the field.

With this powerful AR remote assistance application, a technician or an expert can draw digital annotations (using one’s finger on the screen) that accurately anchor to physical objects, allowing the expert to guide the technician through the process, step-by-step.

It allows experts and technicians to accurately markup live views, highlight details, and guide multi-step solutions.

Essentially, this AR tool empowers field technicians with instant “over the shoulder” field support to finish every jobs and tasks without delay.

The software helps organizations increase service quality while reducing repeat maintenance or repair visits – providing frontline workers with access to service information in a completely modern way.

Vuforia Chalk makes it easy to guide service and troubleshoot situations that may not be covered in training or service manuals.

Vuforia Chalk features and capabilities

Vuforia Chalk is paired with many distinguishing features and capacities that include:

What are Vuforia Chalk applications used for?

Vuforia Chalk makes it easy for remote experts to provide remote over-the-sholder guidance to speed troubleshooting. Using either a mobile device or tablet, remote experts can connect to technicians and annotate on their shared view.

Vuforia Chalk is best used for:

Transform work instructions with Vuforia Expert Capture

Vuforia Expert Capture is the fastest and easiest way to create step-by-step instructions that help frontline workers get their job done accurately and efficiently.

Vuforia Expert Capture gives content creators and subject matter experts step-by-step instructions with rich media content, text, and audio to improve workforce productivity, quality, safety, and compliance.

It is an out-of-the-box AR solution that features drag and drop AR content creation for industrial enterprises looking to rapidly document expert knowledge and then easily scale that knowledge to new or redeployed workers as hands-on training or task guidance.

This tool provides an easy way for experts in your organization to record video procedures and instructions to others using augmented and assisted reality.

Features of Vuforia Expert Capture

There are many distinguishing features and capabilities of Vuforia Expert Capture some of which include:

What are Vuforia Expert Capture applications used for?

Vuforia Expert Capture is best used for:

Why use Vuforia products?

Vuforia makes AR content easy to create and deliver widely to the enterprise to help improve efficiencies, reduce downtime, and enable safer and more productive workers.

With the industrial Vuforia AR platform, organizations can build custom experiences from the ground up, or rapidly create and scale enterprise-ready industrial AR experiences without writing any code using Vuforia Studio.

Whether the requirement is a custom solution or the ability to deliver rapidly, Vuforia delivers powerful, game changing industrial AR technology.

Looking to to get started with AR? Contact us.

If you…

… then get in touch with a Vuforia AR Specialist to answer questions and schedule your demonstration. Our AR experts can help you take the next step in your journey.

This is a guest blog written by Jonathan Lang from PTC – you can find the original blog post on PTC.com.

While augmented reality (AR) and computer vision technology are making it possible to wear digital clothing, the concept of a digital thread offers a powerful new framework to unlock data accessibility and add new analytical and decision-making capabilities to your business.

The digital thread is proven to drive speed, agility, and efficiency in the products, operational processes, and related worker tasks.

Let’s take a look at how:

What is a digital thread?

Digital threads seek to create homogeneity and simple universal access to data. They follow a single set of related data as it weaves in and out of business processes and functions to create continuity and accessibility.

A digital thread can be created for many different entities and processes. Most commonly, a thread of a product follows the lifecycle from design inception through engineering and product lifecycle management, to manufacturing instructions, supply chain management, and through to service histories and customer events.

This thread enables enterprises to anticipate and effectively communicate bi-directionally up and down stream of where the product is in its lifecycle, ensuring all participants utilize the most current data and can react quickly to changes or new insights.

Similar threads are emerging for entire operational environments and processes – and even worker tasks and workflows – due to the prevalence of digitization across the value chain driven by technologies like IIoT, AR, MES, and others.

Why do I need a digital thread?

Data discovery accounts for a lot of workers’ time. Integration of disparate information systems in retrospect is costly and jeopardizes goals, deadlines, and market opportunities. A 2018 study by IDC of more than 400 professionals who work with data found that 37% of the time they spent ‘getting to insight’ was searching for information, while only 27% was used for analysis.

In the age of digital transformation, new data challenges have emerged, and digital threads offer a solution to improve the speed and agility of enhanced decision-making promised by all of this data. They’re about removing bottlenecks and improving transparency and accuracy of critical business information across the value chain.

How do digital threads enable digital twins?

While there are benefits to this continuity across related data sets and activities, the advanced versions incorporate physical world sensor data through IIoT capabilities or through the use of physics-based ‘virtual sensors’. Utilizing these physical world proxies of products, processes, and even people and their workflows, AI algorithms can test potential scenarios to find optimization opportunities for a variety of outcomes.

When a digital thread or ‘definition’ of a product or process is applied to a 2D or 3D graphical proxy and real-world data is modeled against it, this is referred to as a digital twin. Digital twin use cases include predictive maintenance and service for products and operational intelligence across an industrial environment.

To achieve a digital twin, a digital thread must first be established. Digital thread is predominantly used to unify and orchestrate data across the lifecycle of a product, from original design, to engineering, manufacturing, operation, and service. This enables product manufacturers to analyze a holistic data set, and ensures that functions across the organization are always working with the most up-to-date information.

With the widespread adoption of IIoT technology, connected worker technology like augmented reality, and increasingly sophisticated MES and supply chain networks, digital threads are quickly expanding beyond products to be the connective tissue enabling operational insights. Woven together into a holistic view of an enterprise across many interrelated processes and functions, the relationship between multiple digital threads is referred to as a digital fabric or mesh.

Even today, digital mesh is forming all around us and will be the foundation upon which we architect and orchestrate digital experiences in the physical world in the future.

To learn more about digital twins, read our blog on how digital twins improve future innovation and product development.