Imagine being out at sea working on a dangerous oil rig and something has gone awry with part of the machinery. You’ve tried everything, but nothing works. You’re going to have to call in an expert, but it’s really complicated to explain the problem to the expert back at headquarters. Remote AR seeks to solve this problem with their augmented reality (AR) application, which aims to help resolve issues like this between a technician and expert.
VRFocus spoke to Scott Montgomerie CEO and Co-Founder of Scope AR at the Virtual Reality Developers Conference (VRDC) in San Francisco, USA. Montgomerie explains that Remote AR enables a technician and expert to collaborate together in AR with the aid of annotations. The application is cross-platform and works on both Windows Surface and Android.
As the name suggests, Remote AR is capable of working in remote locations due to its ability to work with all types of network including 4G if there isn’t great wi-fi available. “One of the most amazing things is, we actually have a thing called low bandwidth mode where it freezes the video, and ends up sending still frames, but because of the magic of augmented reality, the annotations can be added from one perspective and then seen from another perspective”, Montgomerie explains. So, depending on the location of your services, and as long as there is some type of connectivity available – this would be a great application that could save time and money.
Remote AR currently works for one-on-one calls; however, Montgomerie is looking to add many-to-one as a feature in the future as this is the number one request from their clients. At the moment simple annotations is what Remote AR is able to do, however sending schematics and overlaying them on real equipment is something they’ve stayed away from for now. This is probably due to high bandwidth needed to send 3D assets across.
To find out more watch the video below.