Smart Helmets

While companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft battle over the consumer market for augmented reality (AR) gadgets, the real action may be in the industrial technology sector. Large corporations in the aerospace, oil and gas, automotive and utilities sectors are investing directly in AR systems for field service, manufacturing and material-handling applications that will improve productivity and reduce costs – just as Dan predicted as early as 2000.

For example, Baker Hughes, one of the world’s largest oil field service companies, uses AR headsets to remotely diagnose problems and instruct crews on how to conduct repairs by overlaying digital illustrations on real-world images while talking in real time with workers on-site. The system was co-developed directly with VRMedia and has already saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs alone.

But the bigger payoff may come in reducing downtime. On average, offshore oil and gas rigs are forced to halt operations for 27 days every year, just waiting for specialists to be flown in, and a typical 200,000-barrel-per-day refinery loses up to $12 million in revenue each day it’s offline. As a result, estimates indicate that by 2022, annual expenditures for AR technology by energy and utility companies alone will reach $18 billion.