The team from Kumulos look at why industrial augmented reality is becoming big business

For years there’s been much hype around augmented reality (AR) and mixed teality. AR used to be the domain of the Glass-hole or the Pokémon gamer. But it’s no surprise that industrial augmented reality has finally come of age.

Industrial augmented reality (IAR) objectives
In a recent report by PTC, the $1.6bn industrial IoT and augmented reality specialist, it says they are expecting 86 per cent of industrial enterprises to launch customer focused AR projects in the next 12 months.

At the moment, there’s a lot of talk about enterprises going through ‘digital transformation’ programs. In fact, they seem to be turning to industrial augmented reality as a way to differentiate their goods and services (50 per cent) and offer more value to their customers, generate higher revenues (28 per cent) and create new business models and revenue streams (17 per cent).

Interestingly, internal projects get a look in too. There is expected to be a significant increase in investment in business to employee (B2E) projects. Organisations are waking up to the potential of IAR to increase operational efficiency (44 per cent), support training and skills transfer (39 per cent), lower costs by harnessing AR (33 per cent) as well as increasing manufacturing quality control (28 per cent) and reducing development life-cycles (28 per cent).

In fact, AR technology is reaching a tipping point. It’s moving from the early adopters and lab experiments into the mainstream. Market forecasts estimate that the market is now annually worth $11.14bn rising to over $60bn annually by 2023.

Strongest AR growth is in industrial sectors
It’s looking like the strongest growth will be in industrial sectors. Firstly, these organisations have the wallets to invest. Moreover, hardware has matured to the point where the AR technology can be deployed safely and reliably in industrial environments. Gone are the days of the google glass ‘Glass-holes’. This is now becoming mainstream and cool. The speed at which this market is maturing is impressive. A survey in 2016 showed that just 67 per cent of companies were considering augmented reality roll outs – compared to the 86 per cent in 2019.

Top use case of industrial augmented reality
Always on top of emerging technology trends and Industry 4.0, Kumulos previously updated our mobile app performance management platform to be feature complete with Unity 3D. This means Kumulos supports the full features set within Unity 3D. This allows mobile app owners to manage the content of their mobile app, manage push notifications, view analytics, generate monthly reports and manage & report on crashes. Also, if it calls for it, they can manage app store optimisation (ASO) – all within one single pane of glass.

Oil & Gas sector use case
IAR is already being used in a broad range of industries including Industrial AR in the Oil & Gas sector. For example, Mozenix works with some of the world’s top companies to develop high performance mobile apps for Apple ARKit and Google ARCore across many industry sectors. In particular, they have been developing a new application called R2S AR for the oil and gas industry. This use of AR is reducing costs and enhancing operational efficiency.

Watch the video. See R2S Technical Director explore their AR application to gain an insight into this latest use of AR.  It extends the value proposition of their software to include both remote and on-site users.

As you can see, all project data held by clients in R2S is now accessible through intrinsically safe mobile devices. Users can simply point the device at the equipment on-site and R2S AR will provide detailed information on, for example, but not limited to; maintenance history, asset registers and live data feeds.

Add augmented reality to your mobile app development services
If you want to find out how you too could offer augmented reality services, contact Kumulos and arrange a demo today.  Or, sign up for a free trial of Kumulos and get started with the platform which gives you all the tools for mobile app development in one place.

Leading augmented reality development companies
Otherwise, if you are about to embark on an augmented reality journey yourself and looking for AR experts to help you, we’ve done some of the leg-work for you. We recently summarised who we see as the leading Augmented Reality Development Companies. Good Luck.