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PTC just held the Thing Event in Boston. This is the latest rollout of products and solutions revolving around IoT and the ThingWorx platform. But the star of the show was Augmented Reality (AR) and showcasing the solutions and technology of their latest acquisition, Vuforia (late 2015), an acknowledge leader in AR technology. Working off of its new tagline "Take a Fresh Look at Things", PTC has added an entirely new dimension to their IoT, Digital Twin, predictive analytics, and smart, connected product design strategy by adding AR to the mix. Jim Heppelmann, CEO of PTC depicted IoT as changing the very nature of work, industry boundaries and competition, changing the intrinsic value of things, and the way companies make money.
PTC has spent over $700 million in the last 2-3 years to expand and develop a technology platform for the smart connected ecosystem of things. They started with ThingWorx, a platform for mobile and web applications to enable companies to build this ecosystem. Next was Coldlight, advanced machine learning technology for predictive and prescriptive analytics. They followed with the acquisition of Axeda and Kepware, both leaders in connectivity technology to establish the connected environment. Basically, PTC has been re-inventing itself moving to the IoT world, but their PLM core of CREO for CADx and WindChill for PDM remains intact and essential to its IoT and Digital Twin initiatives, and the merging of the digital and physical worlds. Now, PTC has added AR, as an essential component of this merging of the virtual and physical ecosystem of things and offering a significantly enhanced user experience.
Heppelmann pointed out that AR is a technology that allows the user (consumer, service technician, assembler in production lines, etc.) to change the way they interact with things. AR allows the overlaying or imposing of virtual/digital information in the form of 3D graphics onto the physical product, equipment, or asset that makes up the real world. AR has spawned an explosion of new wearable devices including OGD smart glasses, helmets, and viewers which are an order of magnitude better than the soon to be discontinued Google glasses.
In sampling some of the hardware at the vendor booths I experienced very lightweight and trim glasses with very powerful graphics processors built in. Some delivered a very vivid and rich graphics environment in eye-popping 3D, while others offered a translucent lens for normal external viewing while picking up the virtual 3D models accessed in a real-time data stream from the PTC ThingServer. The virtual models were overlaid on the physical equipment, in this case a Schneider Electric UPS unit. The virtual model offered exploded views in 3D and could be manipulated by hand motions. You connected with the physical equipment or product by focusing on a “Vumark”, a physical mark or logo on the equipment that locked you into the virtual world when the Vumark was detected and a virtual box around the logo turned green. Vumarks are use an optical reader code similar to barcodes or QR codes, and configured by users with the Vuforia platform. Users can integrate brand logos into the Vumarks for a uniqueness factor. If you were using a tablet device the camera in the tablet captured the physical view while the virtual model was superimposed over the physical. That’s basically how AR works. However, the Vuforia environment was very easy to use, and was connected to the virtual 3D engineering models by real-time streaming.
PTC is initially targeting the service and maintenance sector with AR, mainly in the industrial space, but Vuforia has customers in retail sector (food & bev.) and marketing to sell big ticket items (cars, electronics, etc.). They showed a demo where a truck dashboard was switched to multiple virtual modes that provided the driver with many options for physical gauges and displays.
In addition to the Vuforia AR solution set, PTC is rolling out a suite of “Thing” apps which includes:
According to Heppelmann, PTC’s goal is to completely eliminate the maintenance and service manuals in their present form. Also, to streamline maintenance training for the techs, and to introduce new service-based business models. AR will also work in conjunction with the digital twin concept to enable a new generation of predictive and prescriptive analytics that bring about new business models where the equipment OEMs will retain ownership of its equipment and provide continuous and optimized service on a subscription-based model.
AR has been around for a while now, but PTC, with its acquisition of Vuforia and its combined strategy of IoT, ecosystem of smart connected products, SLM, Digital Twin, advanced analytics, and now the AR component appears to be taking its IoT strategy to a new level.
PTC has spent over $700 million in the last 2-3 years to expand and develop a technology platform for the smart connected ecosystem of things. They started with ThingWorx, a platform for mobile and web applications to enable companies to build this ecosystem. Next was Coldlight, advanced machine learning technology for predictive and prescriptive analytics. They followed with the acquisition of Axeda and Kepware, both leaders in connectivity technology to establish the connected environment. Basically, PTC has been re-inventing itself moving to the IoT world, but their PLM core of CREO for CADx and WindChill for PDM remains intact and essential to its IoT and Digital Twin initiatives, and the merging of the digital and physical worlds. Now, PTC has added AR, as an essential component of this merging of the virtual and physical ecosystem of things and offering a significantly enhanced user experience.
Heppelmann pointed out that AR is a technology that allows the user (consumer, service technician, assembler in production lines, etc.) to change the way they interact with things. AR allows the overlaying or imposing of virtual/digital information in the form of 3D graphics onto the physical product, equipment, or asset that makes up the real world. AR has spawned an explosion of new wearable devices including OGD smart glasses, helmets, and viewers which are an order of magnitude better than the soon to be discontinued Google glasses.
In sampling some of the hardware at the vendor booths I experienced very lightweight and trim glasses with very powerful graphics processors built in. Some delivered a very vivid and rich graphics environment in eye-popping 3D, while others offered a translucent lens for normal external viewing while picking up the virtual 3D models accessed in a real-time data stream from the PTC ThingServer. The virtual models were overlaid on the physical equipment, in this case a Schneider Electric UPS unit. The virtual model offered exploded views in 3D and could be manipulated by hand motions. You connected with the physical equipment or product by focusing on a “Vumark”, a physical mark or logo on the equipment that locked you into the virtual world when the Vumark was detected and a virtual box around the logo turned green. Vumarks are use an optical reader code similar to barcodes or QR codes, and configured by users with the Vuforia platform. Users can integrate brand logos into the Vumarks for a uniqueness factor. If you were using a tablet device the camera in the tablet captured the physical view while the virtual model was superimposed over the physical. That’s basically how AR works. However, the Vuforia environment was very easy to use, and was connected to the virtual 3D engineering models by real-time streaming.
PTC is initially targeting the service and maintenance sector with AR, mainly in the industrial space, but Vuforia has customers in retail sector (food & bev.) and marketing to sell big ticket items (cars, electronics, etc.). They showed a demo where a truck dashboard was switched to multiple virtual modes that provided the driver with many options for physical gauges and displays.
In addition to the Vuforia AR solution set, PTC is rolling out a suite of “Thing” apps which includes:
- ThingX: Enabling the thing experience – user interaction with the product/equipment
- ThingBrowser: Internet interaction with the connected ecosystem
- ThingServer: The heart of the Thing suite. Repository of thing information. The source for engineering models, operational information, maintenance docs, service information, equipment specs. etc.
- ThingBuilder: Enables access to information from the digital twin
According to Heppelmann, PTC’s goal is to completely eliminate the maintenance and service manuals in their present form. Also, to streamline maintenance training for the techs, and to introduce new service-based business models. AR will also work in conjunction with the digital twin concept to enable a new generation of predictive and prescriptive analytics that bring about new business models where the equipment OEMs will retain ownership of its equipment and provide continuous and optimized service on a subscription-based model.
AR has been around for a while now, but PTC, with its acquisition of Vuforia and its combined strategy of IoT, ecosystem of smart connected products, SLM, Digital Twin, advanced analytics, and now the AR component appears to be taking its IoT strategy to a new level.