Augmented reality, or AR, promises to usher in the easiest way to do a service of any kind. A front-line medic could see a dotted line on a wounded soldier and get remote instructions from a skilled surgeon to “cut here.” An untrained auto mechanic could service a Lamborghini if an iPad showed him exactly where on the car a part could be accessed.
AR, which is the technology that superimposes computer-generated images onto views of real objects, may have made a giant improvement. OPS Solutions’ Light Guide Systems is able to impose computer-generated images directly onto the real objects. You don’t have to look through that diving bell helmet that is the Oculus Rift or wear not-quite-small-enough glasses like the HoloLens. You don’t have to hold up an iPad with both hands.
Kyle Smith, sales director at OPS, was showing the Light Guide Systems at the recently-held Advanced Manufacturing Expo and Conference. The patented technology was using a pair of overhead projectors to display images on top of a model of a human head and torso.
It takes less than a brain surgeon to realize that this is what AR should have been all along. When it gets right down to it, users don’t want to wear big headsets or funny looking glasses. They know people are laughing at them as they grope around and bump into things. And the novelty of seeing what you need to do on a mobile device wears off each time you have to put down your mobile device to pick up your wrench.
Light Guide Systems
Light Guide Systems, a small Novi, Michigan firm (only eight full-time employees), already has some big customers. Heard of Chrysler, Ford, GM and Boeing?
In a comparison conducted at Chrysler, the Light Guide Systems way outperformed “best-in-class printed work instructions,” said Paul Ryznar, OPS Solutions founder and CEO, in a company video, improving quality by 80 percent and productivity by 40 percent.
Using machine vision, twin overhead projectors and their proprietary software, Light Guide Systems lights up your work surface and guides (Light Guide, get it?) what you should be doing with images and instructions. The put-this-part-here system takes the place of printed instructions, ordinary video—or the foreman on an assembly line.
HP Finally Sprouts in Industry
OPS Solutions also showed the first commercial application of the HP Sprout that we’ve seen. Released with much fanfare in 2014, the all-in-one computer with its odd-looking integrated 3D scanner initially targeted what HP felt was the “can’t miss” consumer scanning market full of tinkerers and hobbyists. But this demographic did not fall over themselves to buy what was probably HP’s most expensive PC. These were people who soldered wires in their parents’ basements and for whom a $50 Raspberry Pi was a splurge. HP reset their sights on schools and students with its Sprout Pro version. Somewhat a misnomer—as a Pro designation is usually reserved for professional—it may have been only OPS Solutions that took HP at its word as they incorporated its proprietary software into the Sprout platform.
Light Guide Systems adds its own hardware (for projection) and software. According to the company’s press release, “Light Guide Systems helps reduce error and radically improve manufacturing assembly processes by projecting a digital operating ‘canvas’ directly onto virtually any work surface and providing audio and visual prompts, guidance, pacing and direction.”
We don’t know how much Light Guide Systems costs, but expect it to be more than the $2,200 HP Sprout Pro.
Light Guide Systems uses mostly PowerPoint as its image source for AR projections, but we can’t help but think of the potential CAD and engineering applications.