There are a number of see-through augmented reality solutions on the market, but Mountain View-based company Atheer says their SmartGlasses are “the industry’s only mobile, gesture-controlled see-through smart glasses.” Atheer is showcasing this technology at SPAR International 2015.
The glasses work on a principle that the company is calling Augmented Interactive Reality (AiR), which lays 3D representations of digital data on top of a user’s real-world view and allows users to interact with those representations as if they were physical objects. The company’s website notes that, as a result, users can interact with digital information without physically touching anything, which keeps hands free for completing the task at hand. They call the interface “precise, mobile-optimized gesture recognition.”
Atheer is targeting the field services, healthcare, and oil & gas markets, where their “contextualized 3D augmented reality” can be used to display information only when and where it is needed.
During a busy pre-conference session, a representative showed off the SmartGlasses. Wearing the headset in front of the audience (with a projector showing the AR from his view) he demonstrated how they can guide a field worker step by step through the process of replacing a part, for instance a complex valve. The SmartGlasses augmented the part with digital instructions and walked him through the steps.
He also showed how you can use the glasses to view contextual information for a part. “I can blow it up with a simple click here, I can click on this part, I can do part ordering here. I can click on the information and be instantly linked to that part’s maintenance and safety warnings documentation here that I can just swipe on through.” As he waved his hand in the air from right to left, the virtual pages turned.
“At any point during the repair,” he said, “you can use these macro gestures that we give you access to in our SDK as well. So if I hold my hands up like this [he holds his hands up, thumbs together with index fingers extended]we have it taking a photo. This could be a video call, this could be starting a voice communication, whatever you want. The main reason to use it would be to document the steps that you’ve taken during the repair here.”
Here, the projection showed the audience looking back at the presenter through his augmented reality glasses.
In addition to presenting the SmartGlasses at the product preview session, Atheer will be offering live demos on the exhibition floor.
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