The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance detailed AR safety risks in industry to guide users on the path to AR adoption.
Augmented reality (AR) has been steadily gaining popularity as an industrial tool. It’s enabled engineers to immerse themselves in 3D designs, helped manufacturers plan and optimize factory layouts, and proved a valuable asset for training and simulation.
Not all have embraced the technology, but with spatial computing making headlines with Apple’s recent Vision Pro headset, holdouts may find themselves increasingly wondering: can AR work for me?
The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA) made answering that question a bit easier today with the release of its AR Safety Infographic. The interactive chart details 12 benefits, hazards and risks of industrial AR use to give prospective users a full picture of how the technology could impact their workplace.
AR proselytizers typically don’t dwell on the downsides of the technology, but the AREA infographic reveals several safety risks worth considering. The biggest, shown in red at the bottom, relate to the hard facts of wearing a clunky headset over one’s eyes: cognitive distraction, reduced visibility and physical strain. These downsides could make AR users a risk to themselves and their coworkers, particularly in industrial environments where workers must remain alert to potential danger.
But at the same time as it introduces these risks, AR has the potential to solve them. The top layer of the AREA infographic reveals that AR can benefit user safety by improving their situational awareness, reducing their mental load and decreasing their need to expose themselves to other potential industrial hazards.
So is AR a safety risk or a safer way to work? It can be both. Like any technology, AR has upsides and downsides, and the final balance lies in the end use. AREA’s goal is to help enterprises understand these tradeoffs to adopt AR with confidence.
“Our mission is to help companies in all parts of the AR ecosystem achieve greater operational efficiency through the smooth introduction and widespread adoption of interoperable AR-assisted enterprise systems,” said Mark Sage, AREA’s executive director, in an AREA press release. “Our AR Safety Infographic provides reliable guidance that makes the path to AR adoption surer, shorter, and smoother.”
AREA is an alliance that covers the full spectrum of spatial computing stakeholders. Members include hardware providers such as DigiLens, Magic Leap and Vuzix; engineering software developers such as Dassault Systèmes, Hexagon and PTC; academic institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and Wichita State University; and engineering end users such as Boeing and Boston Engineering.
