Game Changing Technology - Augmented Reality

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there could be devices that can see the world the way we do, recognize images and objects like the human brain and pull in information from knowledge, images and ideas? A Cognitive mind relates this to the Heads up displays from Iron Man, computers in Minority Report and Maps in Avatar which blew our mind away. A Few years back these ideas may have been reckoned fiction, whereas now the plausibility of such advancements are very near.

We all have seen the power of the internet, and how in the last 20 years it has changed the way we live and work. With Augmented Reality futurists believe the next paradigm shift is here, where we can take literally any content that we view and analyse it with a huge amount of additional information that we do not see.

A Quick Overview of Augmented Reality (AR)

AR is achieved when the a device is capable of generating a view for the user, which is a combination of a real scene and Virtual information which is inserted and overlaid on this real scene to create an enhanced view of the real scene.

Evolution of AR

In the early 1970s AR initially found its way into real time application through the heads up display of fighter jets with display targets and cross-wires to enable the pilots to Aim better and lock on to targets. This was then translated into more applications that we are aware of now like the Heads up display on the cars that give the driver navigation instructions, speed information etc. In the present time the potential of AR has grown exponentially with the evolution of technology, especially smart phones. There are AR applications that utilize the mobiles camera and computational power to display 3-D catalogues, translate languages and also recognize locations and give directions.

Industries AR is all set to Revolutionize

A lot of industries realize the potential of AR, and how it can revolutionize them, a forerunner is the print media and advertising industry, the moving Portraits, talking news papers that we imagined while reading Harry potter is all set to become real with the advent of AR. All you would need is a good internet connection and a smart phone, and we could scan over the image which would interlace the image with the digital content supporting it. Another Major contender looking to explore the potential of the ground breaking technology is the Aviation Industry

AR in the Aviation Industry

The Aviation industry has been one of the slower yet stringent adaptors of technology, the power of AR would be able to help mechanics do away with standard approach of task cards, all he would need to do, instead of painstakingly reading through task cards is visually look at a video interlace on how the task is to be performed. This would reduce the manual error by a huge extent and increase productivity.

Let me take you through a possible instance of a day in the life of a mechanic who has the power of AR to utilize in the form of a google glass, to get him through his routine day

A Typical day would start with some tasks assigned to the Mechanic, next he would then get to his assigned aircraft, scan it through his glass which would give him a high level status of the aircraft like the current FH/FC the grounding time available. Also, the number of tasks that are assigned to him on this particular aircraft, along with the zones where his tasks fall would get highlighted.

The mechanic can simply look at his Part/Work area, and scan it with his AR enabled device, the device would be capable of scanning the Part/Work area and understand what the user is looking at and prompt him with what are the relevant tasks that are allocated to him. He could then pick the relevant task and run through a video interlace of the task to be performed with step by step instructions that are inter woven into the video.

Apart from this, in case he notices there a hydraulic fluid leak but he is not sure what is the cause of the leak, all he does is scans the fluid which would prompt him to look at the possible areas of occurrences of this leak where he can possible drill through and investigate to get it fixed. These are some of the simple yet important adaptations that can be used to make life really simple for the mechanic.

End Note

A major factor why AR is looking to metamorphosize the aviation industry is because a large part of the costs incurred by the Airlines, Heli Operators and the MRO’s go into training their mechanics as the time it takes for them to reach a specific skill level is huge. With the advent of implementing new age technology like AR, the time invested in training would reduce substantially.

Ramco Systems, one of the first Aviation ERP solution providers to come up with a web based solution and a pioneer in making entire suite of applications available on cloud, is not new to investing in technology innovation. Having now showcased multiple use cases for Aviation solution on wearable devices like the Google glass and Pebble watch, All I can say for now is that -ARe you ready?!