GE’s Sam Murley scopes out the state of AR and what’s next — from thearea.org

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

AREA: How would you describe the opportunity for Augmented Reality in 2017?
SAM MURLEY: I think it’s huge — almost unprecedented — and I believe the tipping point will happen sometime this year. This tipping point has been primed over the past 12 to 18 months with large investments in new startups, successful pilots in the enterprise, and increasing business opportunities for providers and integrators of Augmented Reality. During this time, we have witnessed examples of proven implementations – small scale pilots, larger scale pilots, and companies rolling out AR in production — and we should expect this to continue to increase in 2017. You can also expect to see continued growth of assisted reality devices, scalable for industrial use cases such as manufacturing, industrial, and services industries as well as new adoption of mixed reality and augmented reality devices, spatially-aware and consumer focused for automotive, consumer, retail, gaming, and education use cases. We’ll see new software providers emerge, existing companies taking the lead, key improvements in smart eyewear optics and usability, and a few strategic partnerships will probably form.

AREA: Do you have visibility into all the different AR pilots or programs that are going on at GE?
SAM MURLEY:

At the 2016 GE Minds + Machines conference, our Vice President of GE Software Research, Colin Parris, showed off how the Microsoft HoloLens could help the company “talk” to machines and service malfunctioning equipment. It was a perfect example of how Augmented Reality will change the future of work, giving our customers the ability to talk directly to a Digital Twin — a virtual model of that physical asset — and ask it questions about recent performance, anomalies, potential issues and receive answers back using natural language. We will see Digital Twins of many assets, from jet engines to or compressors. Digital Twins are powerful – they allow tweaking and changing aspects of your asset in order to see how it will perform, prior to deploying in the field. GE’s Predix, the operating system for the industrial Internet, makes this cutting-edge methodology possible. “What you saw was an example of the human mind working with the mind of a machine,” said Parris. With Augmented Reality, we are able to empower the workforce with tools that increase productivity, reduce downtime, and tap into the Digital Thread and Predix. With Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Augmented Reality quickly allows language to be the next interface between the Connected Workforce and the Internet of Things (IoT). No keyboard or screen needed.

 

 

From DSC:
I also believe that the tipping point will happen sometime this year.  I hadn’t heard of the concept of a Digital Twin — but I sense that we’ll be hearing that more often in the future.

 

 

 

With Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Augmented Reality quickly allows language to be the next interface between the Connected Workforce and the Internet of Things (IoT). No keyboard or screen needed.

 

 

 


From DSC:
I then saw the concept of the “Digital Twin” again out at:

  • Breaking through the screen — from medium.com by Evan Helda
    Excerpt (emphasis DSC ):
    Within the world of the enterprise, this concept of a simultaneous existence of “things” virtually and physically has been around for a while. It is known as the “digital twin”, or sometimes referred to as the “digital tapestry” (will cover this topic in a later post). Well, thanks to the internet and ubiquity of sensors today, almost every “thing” now has a “digital twin”, if you will. These “things” will embody this co-existence, existing in a sense virtually and physically, and all connected in a myriad of ways. The outcome at maturity is something we’ve yet to fully comprehend.