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One of the things that has often been suggested as a potential barrier to the adoption of augmented reality in field service has been the reliance on additional hardware. Indeed, during a recent presentation on the Field Service News Digital Symposium demonstrating OverIT's Space1 Augmented Reality solution for field service workers, a slick video showed the potential use of the tool, with transportation workers using a real ware head-mounted computer...

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While the technology is a fantastic device, it is, as are all such devices an additional expense. Of course, the ability of an engineer to work hands-free is hugely valuable. But at a time when we are looking at an ongoing and unprecedented global economic downturn, many field service organizations may be looking at such additional costs as a barrier to adoption. This may even be the case even though such solutions could become essential in a world where remote assistance is becoming increasingly important.

So is that a requirement for the Space1 solution to be utilized in the field? Does it require a head-mounted computer or smart glasses? Does the solution have to run on a real ware device, or is it device agnostic?

 

"We typically support any hardware that it's available on the market, and most of all, we support our customers in finding the device that will work best for them..."

- Francesco Benvenuto, OverIT

 

"In space one, we are agnostic in terms of hardware," explained Francesco Benvunto of OverIT during the Q&A section of the presentation.

"We typically support any hardware that it's available on the market, and most of all, we support our customers in finding the device that will work best for them. This ranges from tablets and mobile phones to devices like the real wear head-mounted device and even more immersive tools such as Hololens. We are totally agnostic.

Of course, another big question around hands-free devices is just how easily they can respond to voice commands. In the demonstration provided by Space1, for example, the worker was in a busy rail depot where one would imagine there could be a significant amount of background noise.

In such environments, noise cancellation and the ability for the device to read and respond to aural commands effectively is crucial to whether it is fit-for-purpose. One question field service organizations must consider when exploring such solutions is the effectiveness of the solutions ability to operate in such environments - and is that a hardware or software consideration?

"It's both on the hardware and the on the software," explained Benvenuto.

"We have optimized our solution to work in the best possible way with various hardware. We have so many customers all over the world that are; you know that have those requirements in that they want to allow a technician to work in places where there's a lot of noise. So noise cancellation that is a vital part of the solution.

"Everyone can calibrate the solution for working in such environments. We are also readily available to allow customers to try the solution and to demonstrate the capabilities."

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about Augmented Reality and Remote Services @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Aumented+Reality
• Read exclusive FSN news and features about OverIT & Space1 @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/overit
• Find out about the Space1 and OverIT solutions @ www.overit.it/
• Request a demo of Space1 @ www.overit.it/en/request-demo/
• Follow OverIT on Twitter @ twitter.com/OverITSpA
• Connect with Francesco Benvenuto on LinkedIN @ www.linkedin.com/in/benvenutofrancesco/

Earlier this summer we introduced you to three companies that we felt were set up to bring some significant value to the field service sector. Now as we look forward to 2020 here are three more companies that could potentially help drive your field service business forwards..

Moverio Assist utilises smart glasses enabling real-time collaboration, firm says.

Firm's AR software will now work across smartphone and tablets, complimenting its smart glasses functionality. 

Upskill, the Augmented Reality software provider, has added mobile functionality to its AR platform, which includes smart glasses and Microsoft HoloLens.

Aimed at the industrial workforce, the software encourages collaboration through live videos and insight capture while workers carry out tasks. 

Brian Ballard, Upskill CEO and co-founder said: “With the latest enhancements to Skylight, it makes critical data, peer collaboration and the unique fidelity provided by augmented reality even more accessible. Skylight accelerates organizations along their digital transformation journey, regardless of where they are today.”

Sergey Krasovski, Strategic Marketing Analyst, Trimble explores the opportunities that augmented reality can present for field service organisations... 

The mass and wide-scale adoption of augmented and mixed realities are gathering pace across a multitude of industries. To define, augmented reality refers to the process of superimposing a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world. Mixed reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations.

In the field service industry, this emerging technology can play a significant role in changing the way field technicians and the business collaborates to resolve technical issues, provide support and access documentation. Indeed, technologies such as AR smart glasses can overlay digital information (such as text, video or audio) onto the human field of view, interactively and in real-time. ABI Research sees a turning point for AR smart glasses, predicting that 21 million units of AR smart glasses will be shipped in 2020, with sales expected to reach $100 billion.

Optimizing Service Workflows

Mixed and AR technologies present strong use cases for the field service industry for optimizing service workflows. The ability to perform time-critical jobs thoroughly, quickly and first time around, by obtaining the right information from the correct source, is one.

Historically, service technicians had to sift through paper manuals or search their own memories to find a fix for complex equipment issues. This was an onerous process to go through and often resulted in a disgruntled customer. Today, however, Augmented Reality headsets provide technicians with the ability to communicate, collaborate and solve issues more efficiently. They could be dispatched to a job where they could see the service manual, real-time data and technical details about the product directly overlaid on it. There would be no need for a clunky laptop, phoning a colleague for assistance or contacting the back office for customer information; everything they need would be accessible with a flick of their head.

There is a big place for Augmented Reality in optimising service workflows. However, deploying new technology takes careful planning to realise the full benefits.

Empowering Less Skilled and Ageing Workforces

In mission-critical industries, such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture, ensuring that the service team captures knowledge and transfers it efficiently across the organization is a ‘must have’, not a ‘nice to have’. Asset downtime or system failure is not an option as it may result in entire projects grinding to a halt and monetary losses. Issue resolution needs to be quick and this is where collaborative video tools can best support a less skilled and ageing workforce.

"Video collaboration with augmented peer-to-peer help is being designed and implemented to connect less skilled technicians with more skilled ones remotely..."

Video collaboration with augmented peer-to-peer help is being designed and implemented to connect less skilled technicians with more skilled ones remotely. A technician with specific areas of expertise may reside in an office and virtually walk an apprentice through a service call, step-by-step. Markups can be made during a video call between an expert and field technician to visually show what needs doing and to be sure the field technician is clear about what to perform service on. The expert can draw a circle or arrow on a screen to highlight a specific area, eliminating costly mistakes.

There are parts of the world where you can’t get the right expertise for a job or flying out a specialist may prove too costly for a company. Augmented reality eradicates these concerns by allowing experts to take those of less skill through the entire process. Not with a manual and not on the phone, but they can actually see what they are doing.

Many technicians are performing this peer-to-peer help in ad hoc ways today; using tools like Facetime and Skype. This, however, has resulted in issues. For example, sending a facetime request to another technician can be very disruptive. It is also difficult for the technician requesting help to know who to contact and if they are available. Whilst the time spent by the expert is not often tracked. For organizations that want to successfully scale this technology, they need to consider how to integrate it more tightly into the service workflow.

"As technicians age and a new crop of workers join the business, it is imperative that the latter be able to leverage past knowledge. An ageing workforce is putting pressure on service organisations..."

As technicians age and a new crop of workers joins the business, it is imperative that the latter be able to leverage past knowledge. An ageing workforce is putting pressure on service organisations. The benefit of augmented or virtual reality is its potential as a highly detailed, highly visual training tool. Companies are recording repairs being performed on older pieces of equipment to be used as a reference by less experienced technicians. By utilising augmented reality to make markups pointing to specific equipment details, service companies can create a searchable library using descriptive metadata, and hashtags for quick access. This is a great way to offer on-the-job training and avoids the downtime and loss of productivity associated with having the entire team come into the office to learn new techniques.

Collaborative video tools not only provide the field team with the real-time assistance when solving complex issues, they also connect field service to the entire organization. Indeed, video content, such as markups and screenshots, can be captured by augmented reality tools and stored in a cloud. The stored data can then be tied with a work order and include valuable metadata such as geolocation, type of equipment, date of last service etc. If such data is centrally stored and can be easily accessed, it could be used for purposes like new technician training, proof of work and so on.

For more information on how you can look to roll out augmented reality across your field service operations, visit: www.trimblepulse.com

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Epson, providers of the Moverio® augmented reality (AR) smart glasses platform, today announced both the availability of the new Moverio BT-350 ANSI Edition smart glasses and the release of the Upskill® Skylight® AR platform on Moverio...

The availability of Upskill’s award-winning software with the new BT-350 ANSI Edition allows the Moverio platform to be used in a variety of commercial environments, with the goal of driving greater worldwide adoption of the technology.

Skylight, Upskill’s AR software platform interface allows hands-on workers to get the job done faster and more accurately by connecting them to the people, information and equipment they need while remaining hands-free to focus on their tasks and their tools.

“Epson was one of the first companies to see the value of smart glasses in the enterprise and their Moverio hardware is an established, trusted name in the market,” said Brian Ballard, CEO and co-founder, Upskill. “By offering the Skylight platform on the Moverio BT-350 ANSI Edition smart glasses, we add increased choice for our customers looking to adopt high quality, industrial-grade AR devices to their operations to drive significant performance improvements across their workforce.”

We’re confident that addressing this workplace safety requirement and collaborating with Upskill, will enable enterprises to accelerate smart glasses adoption across the workforceDesigned to be worn in environments that require safety glasses, the new Moverio BT-350 ANSI model includes indoor and outdoor safety shields that meet ANSI Z87.1 safety certification requirements. Featuring a flexible and durable hinge-based headset, the Moverio BT-350 ANSI smart glasses can be worn comfortably on a wide range of head sizes.

Upskill has received numerous awards for Skylight, including recognition as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, Gartner Cool Vendor, Hannover Messe Hermes Award Finalist, and most recently, Augmented World Expo’s “AR Best in Show,” to name a few. On average, customers using Skylight on smart glasses see a 32 per cent performance improvement in use cases that span manufacturing, logistics and field services. Skylight on the Moverio BT350 ANSI Edition creates a smart-safety glass solution for use anywhere eye protection is required for a safe working environment.

“Since Epson launched its first iteration of the Moverio smart glasses seven years ago, we have been diligently working to enhance the technology to meet the demands of end-users, including the need for an ANSI edition of the Moverio glasses,” said Michael Leyva, product manager, augmented reality solutions, Epson. “We’re confident that addressing this workplace safety requirement and collaborating with Upskill, will enable enterprises to accelerate smart glasses adoption across the workforce.”

Support and Availability The new Moverio BT-350 ANSI smart glasses will be available in July 2018 for $1,199 (USD) through authorized Epson resellers and Epson.com. For additional information on the Moverio BT-350 ANSI Glasses please visit fs-ne.ws/GNQh30l7Eh1

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 Editor-in-chief Kris Oldland hightlights three technologies that could help field service organisations enhance protection for employees working alone, reduce potential risk and fulfill duty-of-care responsibilites.

The field service worker is often required to work alone and for the field service organisation this presents a large number of challenges of its own. Legislation across countries varies in this respect but at the very least it is the employer's moral obligation to ensure that any of their employees including those in the field have suitable processes in place to help ensure their safety.

Fortunately, technology is proving an ever-reliable tool to help automate many of these processes and as the continuing trend of wearable technology continues to evolve so will the potential new tools for lone worker protection.

New developments are happening all the time in this exciting space but in this article lets take a look at three concepts I’ve come across recently that could genuinely offer additional lone worker protection.

1. Smart Glasses

   Whilst perhaps the most high profile brand of Smart Glasses, Google’s Glass project met an abrupt end to its well publicised beta program the fact remains that the Smart Glasses market whilst still embryonic remains vibrant.

   However, whilst there is a consumer niche for the devices in areas such as extreme sports, many manufacturers and developers of smart glasses, including Google are turning their attention to the world of business as a target market and field services is an obvious core sector.

   For the lone field worker the ability to receive notifications and instructions whilst keeping both hands free could be a vital health and safety feature, particularly for example for engineers working in high risk environments such as an electricity pylon or scaffolding etc.

   Other benefits of Smart Glasses in field service are evident such as the opportunity for more skilled engineers to guide less qualified colleagues through a repair with a true ‘see-what-I-see’ viewpoint. However, it is the safety aspect that could perhaps be the biggest selling point for Smart Glasses when it comes to adoption by field service companies.

2. Bio Sensor clothing

   It might be the newest area of development for wearable technology,  but Bio Sensor clothing is perhaps one of the most exciting when it comes to the protection of field service workers.

   Bio Sensor clothing is perhaps one of the most exciting when it comes to the protection of field service workers.

   The health and fitness sector is already awash with wearable clothing designed to monitor biometric data ranging from wearable vests, socks and even false teeth. However, once again the applications for these wearables have a perfect place amongst field service engineers.

    

   For example a vest that detects heart rate could be invaluable for the lone worker when they are behind the wheel.

   One can’t help but think that the tragedy just under a year ago year when Harry Clarke fainted at the wheel ploughing his bin lorry into pedestrians in Glasgow city centre, killing six people. Had Clarke been wearing a bio-monitoring vest, perhaps even connected to an Bluetooth enabled engine cut-off mechanism, then perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided.

   Due to the nature of their roles, field engineers are often alone behind the wheel and this is just one potential use of bio sensor clothing that could help not only protect them but also those they share the roads with.

3. Wearable cameras

   The potential for wearable cameras for helping secure lone workers is absolutely huge.  London's Metropolitan Police force is utilising these devices  - they are light enough to not impair the wearer in any way but are also capable of not only capturing and recording video but also of transmitting that data live via either a 3G or 4G signal.

   What this means is that simply by triggering a panic button on their person should an engineer find them selves in trouble for whatever reason the team back in HQ can instantly log-in and see the situation in real-time. Also as the cameras are capable of utilising GPS,  triggers could be put in place for the camera to send an alert and start streaming should an engineer leave an accepted area.

   Such visibility into lone workers can prevent them becoming isolated in the event of any threat to their security and as such can also go a long way to helping ensure our lone workers are as safe as they possibly can be.

These are just three potential applications of wearable technology that can help protect our lone workers, but there are many more. As employers it is our duty to ensure that we embrace the emerging field of wearable technology in order to further enhance the safety of our lone workers in the field.

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Welcome back to this exclusive Field Service News series in which Kris Oldland is exploring some of the technologies that could well become common place tools in the field engineer of 2020’s armoury.

In part one the focus was on smart watches, now in this the second feature in the series we look at how their close cousin the smart glasses and drones could begin to see regular use in field service also.

Wearables- smart glasses

However, whilst smart watches have the ability to improve the way we work in field service, smart glasses have the power to completely change the way we approach our field service operations.

A big statement? Perhaps, especially given the recent press Google Glass has had.

However, it’s important to highlight that whilst the ending of the Public Glass Xplorer program may have been reported in some quarters as an admission of failure, the fact is that the very opposite is true.
Google’s move of taking Glass out of their research division and into their main headquarters, as well as placing Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod and the NEST thermostat suggests anything but. Yet there has definitely been a change of emphasis for Glass and the new focus is very much on industry which makes a huge amount of sense given it’s potential applications.

However, lets return to the topic at hand, a moment ago I mentioned that smart-glasses could change the very way field service operates… so what did I mean by that…Smart glasses don’t just offer hands free communications, they provide a true ‘see-what-I-see’ experience. The implications for this in field service are huge.

Not so long ago labour used to be cheap and things were expensive. Today the reverse is true and this is simply result of the continuing evolution of technology one of the big challenges for many field service organisations, particularly those working on complex devices such as medical equipment for example is managing the cost of getting their highly trained engineers on-site.

In fact this is often the biggest cost of a repair rather than any replacement parts etc.

Not only is there the cost of flying or even driving an engineer to a location which can be considerable, particularly if your operation is global, but also the time it takes for that engineer to be working on each specific repair, especially if your engineers are a highly skilled workforce.

Smart glasses can give a company the ability to use cheaper, less skilled local engineers, to undertake the repair guided by an experienced, engineer who is able to see the work carried being carried out remotely via video stream.

Through this type of application of smart glasses companies can open up huge potential cost savings by not only reducing the cost of each repair, but also by improving the efficiency massively of each of your engineers.

It could also lead to the potential expansion of a field service company into territories it may have been previously uneconomical to enter in. Not too mention the soft benefit of improving your engineers work/life balance which again could lead to better staff retention.

So the simple introduction of smart glasses could pave the way to completely restructure your entire field service operation into a much more efficient and productive unit.

Drones

Whilst Drones or UAD’s to use the official title have been around for sometime they’re potential commercial applications has recently starting soaring.

It was just over a year ago that Amazon launched, what I truly think will go down in history as one of the greatest PR stunts of the last twenty years by announcing Amazon Prime Air complete with a slick video of a drone picking up a parcel from the depot, making it’s way cross country before politely delivering it’s package at the front door.

The result was global press coverage and an 18 minute slot on America’s prime time show 60 minutes as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did his best to make the whole thing look like a genuine glimpse of the not so distant future.[quote float="right"]Like any great ‘blag’ it included a very healthy dose of truth to add as much credibility to the statement as possible.

The way the online retail giant painted the picture is of course absurd and riddled with flaws. The approach would require huge amendments to air space regulations for a start not to mention the vast amount of investment in AI to give the drones the ability to deal with any potential pitfalls and hazards along the way.

However, not only was the Amazon announcement was perfectly timed as it raised the their profile the day before cyber-Monday, but like any great ‘blag’ it included a very healthy dose of truth to add as much credibility to the statement as possible. The fact is that the commercial use of drones is very much on the rise.

In fact the Guardian reported towards the end of the year that licences for flying unmanned drones had risen by 80%.

Of course not all uses are dependent on requiring a license either, for example if the drone is staying within the eye-line of the pilot and the drone is only flying within the vicinity of buildings and personnel for which you have consent to record you may well be fine (although it is always best to check this properly).  Having a drone on-site can give an engineer the opportunity to easily get to high positions and make a quicker analysis of a situation.

Not only is this a time saving measure, it also means that an engineer working on his own can make this evaluation – whereas without he would be reliant on a second engineer coming to assist in order to ensure health and safety requirements were met.

When we consider that a decent quality drone, with HD Camera footage and built in WiFi to allow for instant streaming can now be purchased for under £400 the argument for including one as part of your field engineers kit is a very compelling one for any company whose engineers will be required to work at height.

Look out for the third part of this series in where we turn our attention to Near Field Communications and 3D Printing…

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