Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and others encourage augmented reality for industrial applications with new guidelines.

Most people probably think of augmented reality (AR) as a gaming technology, no doubt due to the popularity of the Pokémon GO app that took smartphone marketplaces by storm last year.
However, AR could make a huge impact on manufacturing and—perhaps even more intriguingly—manufacturing could do the same for AR. That’s why 65 organizations, including major industry players like Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Procter & Gamble, recently came together to develop the first set of AR functional requirements guidelines.
The documents address both software and hardware features, such as battery life, field of view, authoring, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
These guidelines are intended to help AR technology companies develop products for industrial users. They were developed as part of a project through the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), a UI LABS collaboration.
“Augmented reality has immense potential to transform manufacturing, and early adopters are seeing impressive productivity and quality improvements,” said Thomas McDermott, executive director of DMDII. “However, wide adoption of this technology requires collaboration among the industrial companies operating on the front lines and the AR providers designing solutions to ensure the technology under development meets the needs of industry.”
The global AR market is expected to exceed $95 billion USD by 2023, according to a recent Credence Research report. Big Market Research reports that the global augmented reality and virtual reality gear market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.45 percent between 2017-2021.
The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA) will be responsible for the ongoing development, maintenance and updating of the documents produced through the initiative.
“For the first time, the industry—both suppliers and users in the AR space—will have access to a benchmark set of requirements that will help them develop a roadmap and source, select, evaluate and deploy augmented reality solutions,” said Mark Sage, executive director of AREA.
The functional requirements were created at a DMDII workshop in March. In addition to the three heavyweights listed above, the participants included:
- Boeing
- Dow Chemical
- General Electric
- Intel
- Johnson & Johnson
- Microsoft
- Newport News Shipbuilding
- Northrop Grumman
- Rolls-Royce
- Stanley Black & Decker
- U.S. Air Force
To view the documents and provide your own input, click here.