The cloud makes Augmented Reality increasingly efficient

The US military announced last week that it will deploy headsets based on Microsoft's HoloLens to implement what is called an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). Similar applications of Augmented Reality are now also being used in industry - and they are becoming increasingly efficient.

There are no details about what the military application entails, but the announcement talks about increasing the "situational awareness" of the soldiers.

The definition of Augmented Reality is that when users look at their environment through glasses, they receive extra information. In its simplest form, the smart glasses merely serve as a display for that extra information. In more advanced applications, the information is automatically adapted to the situation of the user, and fitted into the image he is looking at. For example, the software can indicate things in the image to provide guidelines.

In this regard, Microsoft has a nice reference in the industry with Lockheed Martin that uses HoloLens in the assembly of Orion - the spacecraft that will put people on the moon again in 2024.

In a blog post (link below) it is explained that the use of smart glasses is interesting because there is little space in the capsule, which makes it difficult to work with a laptop or tablet. The use of smart glasses as wearable displays offers a solution for this.

Mixed reality

But that's just the beginning of the story. The application makes full use of what Microsoft calls mixed reality. This refers to the advanced form of augmented reality in which information is not only displayed in the glasses, but also fits into the image that the user sees of his environment.

For example, for mounting fasteners, the application displays the digital versions of the material where it is to be applied. This saves the operator a lot of time in measuring and marking the locations, and it helps prevent errors from being made.

What this example illustrates is that the software behind augmented reality is much more relevant to the applications than the smart glasses themselves. That software is the bringing together of a whole host of tools and apps that are available in the cloud today. An example of such a tool is Remote Rendering, which is used to create a 3D image of the component to be displayed.

Object Anchors

A new tool in the cloud offering that represents an absolute breakthrough in these types of applications is Object Anchors. It is the tool that makes it possible in this application to show the virtual image of mounting material through the glasses at the exact location in the real environment.

In the past, for these types of applications, anchor points were used that had to be physically installed in the real environment. In practice, QR codes are often used for this because they are easy to recognize by vision systems. The camera in the smart glasses then used those anchor points as a reference to determine where to place virtual elements in the image.

With Object Anchors it is no longer necessary to use physical anchor points. Instead, the image of an object is compared in real time with a virtual model of that object. In the Orion application, a virtual model of the capsule is used for this. Based on that model, the HoloLens can recognize certain points in the capsule and use them as anchor points to calculate the desired position of mounting material, for example. The 3D image of that material can then be projected at that position.

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© Productivity.be, 08/04/2021, Picture: Microsoft

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