AR Workforce Assistance
Technology Life Cycle
Marked by a rapid increase in technology adoption and market expansion. Innovations are refined, production costs decrease, and the technology gains widespread acceptance and use.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
Technology is developed and qualified. It is readily available for implementation but the market is not entirely familiar with the technology.
Technology Diffusion
Embrace new technologies soon after Innovators. They often have significant influence within their social circles and help validate the practicality of innovations.
Able to be implemented in almost any industry, the technological innovations provided by AR enable the incorporation of virtual elements into real environments. By overlaying a physical space with virtual data and 1:1 scale holograms, the user could spot onsite problems, increase accuracy, and avoid costly mistakes. Through smartphones and smart-glasses, it could contain a range of specific sensors, such as infrared cameras and infrared light projectors, allowing it to measure depth and project 3D imagery successfully. Also, a thermal camera could overlay thermal measurements on the visual display, helping spot abnormalities.
As augmented reality solutions can provide a combination of virtual architectural designs with the physical surroundings, it could perhaps make site experts become remote experts. The AR goggles can allow experts to remotely visualize what the user sees on-site while providing an interface through which experts could virtually modify/update the asset themselves or give the user instructions on how to execute the procedure on their own.
This technological solution helps lower maintenance costs and machinery downtime through quick component substitution, identification, and new connection set-up. Another example of use could be in equipment monitoring. In work sites where hundreds of different machines move about, AR can help workers recognize these machines' locations faster. Finally, in underground construction, it could allow users to view unseeable things, such as hidden underground trenches or buried cables.
Future Perspectives
Concerning the planning stages of construction, AR is expected to become one of the most common methods to showcase projects to clients, ensuring their requirements have been addressed prior to construction. Also, as AR could refine the education, planning, safety, and efficiency of workers, it may help avoid incidents and flaws. Every year, many construction workers die due to accidents at construction sites. Training and enabling them to have a better view of their surroundings could prevent them from having accidents that could even lead to death.
Image generated by Envisioning using Midjourney