Proceedix will be expanding its digital inspection and instruction platform with three more brands of smart glasses: Iristick, RealWear and Vuzix. Proceedix has run on Glass since 2014 and will now be available on four different HUD smart glasses by the beginning of this summer. The move reaffirms Proceedix’s belief in the potential of assisted reality glasses for industrial applications.
Smart glasses are hardly a leap into the void for Proceedix. CEO Peter Verstraeten explains: “Thanks to our extensive experience using Proceedix on Glass with customers such as AGCO and Pfizer, we know exactly what does and doesn’t work on assisted reality smart glasses. For over four years we have been testing smart glasses and deploying the technology on the shop floor.”
Clockwise from top left: Iristick.Z1, Vuzix M300, Realwear-HMT1, Glass Enterprise
The industry has also gone through a learning curve: “You sense that engineers and business process managers have a very good idea of which smart glasses they want to deploy and why they want a particular brand.” While assisted reality smart glasses all have a similar DNA, they don’t converge into one design with an identical set of functionalities. “If you compare the RealWear HMT-1 and the Iristick.Z1, a newcomer might think they’re two completely different devices and to some extent they are. While the HMT-1 is perfect for clipping on a hard hat, the Iristick.Z1 are safety glasses with exceptional zoom technology. Inspectors on an outdoor construction site require different glasses than picking operators in a warehouse. This is the primary reason for deploying our software on more wearables.”
Verstraeten is confident that smart glasses will be adopted on a broader scale in enterprise: “At every industrial site, there will be a number of use cases for smart glasses. There’s always a critical procedure that needs to be performed hands-free. It’s just another technology that complements the current devices like PCs, tablets and phones. Most companies will leverage a mix of these devices to empower their smart operators in the digital factories of the future.”
Want to experience it yourself? We’ll be at Augmented World Expo 2018 (booth 619) or you can reach out for a demo of Proceedix on smart glasses.