By Brian Ballard, Co-founder and CEO, Upskill
Augmented reality (AR) is poised to transform the modern warehouse in 2018. AR addresses and solves an important challenge in the warehouse sector by providing hands-free connectivity and data access to workers on the floor.
We have taken both our own insights and observations, as well as the opinions of many experts in the space to form a synopsis of the most important developments in enterprise AR. Here’s what to expect in 2018, and the ramifications for your organization:
- Enterprise AR will become essential to the creation, delivery and service of the world’s best known brands.
PWC projects one in three U.S. manufacturers with use adopt VR and AR by 2018. We agree, and expect AR will serve as the foundation for the future of skilled work for hands-on workers at companies like GE and Boeing to now also Coca-Cola, Walmart and CVS.
- Service and logistics will take pole position in the race for broad adoption of AR.
Manufacturing in no way is going to be left behind, nor is it going to slow down, but there are some scalability factors accelerating field service and logistics adoption more quickly.
- AR will become increasingly more accessible and flexible for enterprises.
People on the factory floor, in the field and in the warehouse, aren’t your typical software engineers and developers, but they are closest to the problems being solved by AR. New drag-and-drop AR application builders like those of the Skylight AR platform allow for codeless integration of many common enterprise data stores.
- Advances in speech will accelerate and make voice a vital interaction paradigm.
Voice offers hands-on professionals, like warehouse workers, a much-needed hands-free interface, connecting workers to information without inhibiting productivity.
- Tech Giants will drive the 3D content revolution for the consumer and enterprise applications.
Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook all are providing deep toolsets for developers to create AR apps. All of these activities by the technology giants in 2017 are lowering the barrier for entry for content creation. This will be a boon not just for consumers, but also the enterprise, particularly as the shared ecosystem continues to grow exponentially.
Whether or not 2018 goes down in history as AR’s inflection point, one thing is for sure: change is coming. With an increased pace of growth and a diversifying ecosystem across consumer and enterprise AR companies, now is a great time to begin or expand your AR deployments. For a much more in depth dive into the key trends and predictions for 2018, check out our recorded webinar, “What’s Next for Enterprise AR in 2018?,” hosted by myself and our chief strategy officer, Jay Kim.
