In the future, light, unobtrusive smart glasses will reliably support deskless work and make technicians more efficient in their tasks. The previous years have seen increasing investment in smart glasses technology, with a number of high-profile acquisitions such as Apple buying Metaio in May, and giants such as Intel investing directly in manufacturers and start-ups, but the challenges are significant.
As observed in this article by Jay Kim of AREA member APX Labs, 2015 brought continuous improvements in form factors, capabilities and even price. This post suggests that there remain at least five major barriers that providers must overcome before their smart glasses are widespread in enterprise. Industry-wide best practices for how to address these challenges have yet to be developed.
Components Aren’t Ready for Prime Time
Processors for Augmented Reality-enabling tasks are steadily improving, but matching required capabilities for enterprise with optimal form factors is still a challenge. For example, graphics processors must be small, lightweight and highly power efficient in order to be placed within eyewear frames that remain comfortable to wear, yet accelerating real world tracking and fluid rendering of virtual objects requires chips like Qualcomm SnapDragon or NVIDIA Tegra X1. Combined with eye tracking capabilities and reliable voice and gesture recognition, these computational requirements remain expensive and produce heat doesn’t quickly dissipate.
A front-facing camera is necessary for creating Augmented Reality experiences but display resolutions remain low, with some smart glasses models sporting VGA cameras that are often not ideal in low-light environments. Tilting and shaking also present challenges and inconsistent experiences for both AR and video conferencing.
Other areas of improvement remain to be made in battery life and in flexible materials. Battery life must be extended to eliminate the need to swap out batteries in mid-shift. The materials used in smart glasses are often brittle and damage easily when dropped. New models specifically designed to industrial specifications are coming to market this year but have yet to be tested in real world settings.
Network Security and Bandwidth
Continuously providing Augmented Reality experiences based on cloud-hosted services and content requires significant, uninterrupted bandwidth and coverage wherever employees with AR devices work. Ensuring reliable WiFi availability in cramped areas of a ship’s steel-plated hull, for example, is a daunting challenge.
Both devices and networks may require high security standards in sensitive environments. Some shortcomings in security include the following:
The provenance of AR experiences is often neither encoded nor certified.
Network data is often not encrypted, and their availability, confidentiality and integrity aren’t yet systematically ensured.
Transmitters and receivers lack verification standards for uniqueness.
Content for Augmented Reality Experiences
As when content was being produced 25 years ago for the brand new World Wide Web, commonly accepted paradigms for the design of AR experiences are non-existent. Authors of AR experiences must experiment and develop their own techniques for ensuring usability of user interfaces and safety.
As with the World Wide Web, standards for user interface design and content first require a greater proliferation of Augmented Reality usage, producing a chicken and egg phenomenon: with poor user experiences, usage remains low. With low demand, experimentation with new designs is slow.
Content for use in Augmented Reality experiences, such as images and 3D models, tends to be authored from scratch. Those companies that have made prior investments in CAD authoring tools have an advantage when they can access and convert existing, industrial CAD models into lightweight, polygonised versions for display in smart glasses. Successful authoring of AR content also requires heavily customized authoring toolchains and workflows and a uniform look and feel for displayed content that is emotive, highly relevant and takes into account safety requirements. Although many large manufacturing organizations can absorb such development costs, this can be a tall order for smaller to mid-sized companies.
Some initiatives such as the OASIS Augmented Reality in Information Products technical committee and the IEEE AR Learning Experience Model (ARLEM) have been formed to address such challenges.
Overall User Experience
In addition to user experience for the human machine interface, other UX factors for smart glasses are essential. Cables are frequently required to connect a hands-free display to the networking or content processing hub, or to the battery pack. If loose, these cables run the risk getting caught in equipment.
Complaints about weight and the lack of adequate load balancing is common for some models. Bulkiness and limited field of view are other frequently heard complaints. The bulkiness and lack of comfortable weight distribution of some models add to the discomfort of wearing the devices for extended periods of time. Narrow FOVs means users must constantly turn their head in order to look for virtual objects, contributing to neck and eye strain.
Safety, Privacy and Regulations
Smart glasses present a number of new and unresolved safety challenges. Their sheer novelty also means that few regulations specifically targeting them have been developed, and the legal environment is still evolving.
As seen from a presentation by attorney Brian Wassom, although new regulatory regimes for smart glasses are required, none exist. Current regulations, such as from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, might have applicability to safety and liability of Augmented Reality while driving. They may also form the basis of future conversations about safety of head-mounted displays in other environments, including enterprise and industrial settings.
Some challenges, for example, the narrow field of view of many models can pose a safety hazard in industrial settings (and not only while driving), as walking around requires extra attention from users of smart glasses.
Front-facing cameras and audio recording capabilities mean that privacy is very much a concern in public as well as in the workplace, from the points of view of both the employer and the employee. Employers currently require that sensitive workplace areas outside of an employee’s purview not be filmed. Systems that reliably shut off cameras when crossing a perimeter could be very valuable in such settings. Furthermore, many employees are concerned that their movements and activities on the job always being recorded. The latter may also be a point of contention and negotiation with local trade unions.
Conclusion
As with other types of wearables, smart glasses represent a novel technology whose development and usage are still evolving. Both business and technological challenges remain to be overcome and will need to be addressed before smart glasses are generally accepted as routine work tools and become more recognized for their productivity-enhancing features.
Despite these challenges, some analysts predict that 2016 will bring more deployments of smart glasses in the enterprise.
What are your key challenges with smart glasses? Is your organization or smart glasses provider addressing any of these challenges already? Share with us your views in comments below.
The post 5 Challenges that Providers of Smart Glasses Must Overcome appeared first on The AREA.