- Robust computer vision that allows experiences from the widest range of target types including objects, models, images, surfaces, multi-targets, cylinders, and VuMarks.
- Cross-platform development that supports Android and iOS ARkits
- Vuforia Fusion enables easy optimization of AR experiences across a range of devices
- Seamless integration with industry-leading complementary design and modelling applications
- Broad community of developers with deep Vuforia Engine experience
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:
- High-end production of custom AR applications
- Developing customer facing applications that require superior product values
- Experiences that require sophisticated and flexible target recognition
- Elevating brands with complementary apps
- Integration with industry-leading design and modeling application
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:
- Visual authoring environment
- Easily import CAD and animated sequences
- Native support for IoT data
- Scales to support global AR deployments
- Certified support for hosting and on-premise deployments
- Powerful spatial and model tracking
- Out-of-the box support for mobile and head worn devices, including Microsoft HoloLens and HoloLens 2
What are Vuforia Studio applications used for?
Vuforia Studio is best used for:
- 3D digital content overlaid on real-world equipment to provide contextual knowledge
- Rapid development of immersive training and instruction content
- Reusing existing CAD models and sequences to create step-by-step work instructions
- Visualizing real-time IoT data to provide operating conditions and equipment performance
- Full-scale visualizations that enable walking around and seeing products
- Accurate identification of spare parts
- Scaling across products, configurations, devices, and geographies.
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:
- Zero development requirements- this AR tool can be provisioned in minutes and used immediately
- Connection links – Chalk users can connect with mobile devices using a video link. This allows the users to share views of the equipment or environment. Each user can draw on their screen to annotate the shared view.
- Advanced annotation that can be locked onto targets- this allows users to move around objects and annotations with 3D spatial recognition.
- Chalk views can be paused- this allows user to easily draw multi-step instructions over objects.
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:
- Enabling remote, virtual assistance between technicians and experts
- Collaboration between physically dispersed colleagues and teams
- Building lightweight AR pilots that prove value fast without development resources
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:
- The ability to rapidly author AR instructions without CAD data, pre-existing assets or development efforts.
- Easy to use templates that simplify and accelerate creating and publishing AR content
- Content editing and publishing is in a secure, web-based environment
- The ability to automatically deliver optimized content across a variety of supported devices.
What are Vuforia Expert Capture applications used for?
Vuforia Expert Capture is best used for:
- Capturing procedures and tasks from senior experts
- Servicing and working with factory floor machines that lack relevant CAD data, or instances where documentation is unavailable or of poor quality
- Documenting multi-step procedures that take place in multiple locations
- Ensuring compliance through documentation of standard operating procedures (SOPs)
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…
- Need help evaluating potential manufacturing AR solutions, product trials and pricing details
- Are ready to learn how to transform your operational efficiencies, output, and quality with AR
… 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.
It’s no wonder people like you are researching ways to reduce downtime. A 2016 ITIC survey found 98% of organizations said a single hour of downtime cost over $100,000. 81% of respondents said an hour of downtime cost their organization over $300,000!
Remote monitoring, remote diagnostics, and predictive analytics are helping organizations reduce downtime. They’re transforming the way companies manage and service their manufacturing operations. As Gary Wollenhaupt calls out in his article about how IoT Slashes Downtime with Predictive Maintenance; manufacturing machinery and other assets can now be connected to the industrial internet of things. Predictive maintenance will begin to replace scheduled maintenance based on mileage, time, usage, or other predictive measures.
We now have the ability to digitally peer into the inner workings of an asset to understand performance, tolerance, temperature, or any number of other factors that can be measured using sensors and device networks. When harnessed, this data is the is the answer to the question being asked by many organizations – “How do I reduce downtime and increase productivity?”
There are many tools on the market to collect the data streaming from sensors and turn it into useful information. We recommend PTC’s suite of industrial connectivity / Industrie 4.0 solutions. We’re not alone. Forrester Researched named PTC and IoT Software Platform Leader and PTC’s ThingWorx was named a leader in “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide IoT Platforms (Software Vendors) 2017 Vendor Assessment.” PTC’s integrated solution suite includes ThingWorx, Vuforia, Kepware, and others.
Our team of solution architects and technical experts can help define and implement the solution(s) you need. We want to help you begin remotely monitoring your assets, whether manufacturing or remotely deployed (products), and leverage predictive analytics to reduce downtime and save money. It may involve a custom solution set, or it could simply be PTC’s eacy-to-deply Manufacturing Apps.
EAC is here to take on as much or as little of your project as necessary. We can simply provide the software for your own team to implement. Or we can manage the entire process from installation, to implementation, to integration and front-end development.
Please contact us. We want to help you leverage technology to reduce downtime and improve your bottom line.
Here is a better description of the solutions mentioned above:
The ThingWorx platform includes compatible modules that deliver the functionality, flexibility, and agility enterprises need to implement industrial IoT apps and AR Experiences. This includes industrial connectivity, analytics, and application enablement. ThingWorx is unrivaled in its ability to help companies quickly connect data streams and publish dashboards or mashups.
Kepware is a single solution for collecting, aggregating, and providing secure access to industrial operations data. The ThingWorx Native Interface integrates the Kepware KEPServerEX with ThingWorx easily and securely. This integration lets organizations take data streams from almost any manufacturing asset and present it in a useable format. The Kepware family also offers a predictive analytics engine in addition to other Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Data Tunneling solutions.
Vuforia is PTC’s solution for creating rich augmented reality experiences for applications such as work instructions, user training / manuals, asset monitoring, and service instructions. It lets users leverage the richness of 3D and insights from IoT to deliver compelling augmented reality experiences the help improve efficiencies, build better products and enable safer, more productive workers.
