AREA member Catchoom is a Barcelona-based computer vision technology service provider and developer of visual search enabling technologies which sends its team to Mobile World Congress each year. In this post on the Catchoom blog, the marketing team describes the situation at MWC 2016 very succinctly: it was more like a ‘Virtual Reality World Congress.’  The first highlight of the post is the photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg casually strolling amid hundreds of journalists wearing Samsung VR headsets during the Samsung preview evening event. This really set the stage for what blossomed into a global discussion about potential risks of VR turning people into tethered, captive puppets.

The post then provides insights about the vendors which were showing AR and making announcements in conjunction with the event. The most notable Augmented Reality announcement covered in the Catchoom blog was the Epson Moverio BT-300 introduction. Other highlights included the Fujitsu helmet for industrial workers.

AREA member APX Labs has announced that Skylight, its software suite for smart glasses, is now available for developers choosing to deploy Recon Jet devices in enterprise use cases. The hardware, originally styled and promoted for sports use cases, combines an Android-based mobile operating system, and an LCD display positioned just below the user’s right eye. The device is water resistant and the lenses are produced with impact resistant materials, making them well suited to workers that need protective eyewear on the job.

This partnership with Recon Instruments, an Intel Company, opens the door for those who are looking for alternate monocular smart glasses products to deploy for hands-free workers. Running Skylight, Recon Jet users are able to see work instructions quickly as well as to receive live task guidance and trouble resolution from a remote expert by way of an Internet connection.

A post on the Recon Instruments blog by Recon co-founder, Dan Eisenhardt, summarizes his excitement about the partnership and potential for Augmented Reality in enterprise.

During a fireside chat conducted at the Web Summit in December, Paul Davies of Boeing and Matt Kammerait of DAQRI summarized the history of AR and explained why it is important for, and provides new value to their companies. The conversation then turned to the future. Davies and Kammerait discussed the many opportunities and challenges ahead for enterprise Augmented Reality. Davies summarized the use cases found in manufacturing aircraft and other Boeing products. He also explained his vision for work instruction delivery in the future: a seamless digital thread that is parallel to the real world that is totally integrated. In the future, Davies suggested, Augmented Reality will be fully integrated into industrial design and production systems. It will always be available when and as needed.

Matt Kammerait described the origins of his company and the challenges encountered, which led to the design and development of the Smart Helmet. He closed by describing the future to which DAQRI products are designed to contribute: a time when any worker will be able to perform any task on any project at any time in any company.

According to a press release issued by Atheer, AREA members Atheer and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) are collaborating with energy companies on enterprise Augmented Reality evaluation projects. The focus of collaboration is enhancing productivity and safety for hands-on professionals in utilities. The announcement also mentions that the companies demonstrated the Atheer AiR platform in the EPRI DistribuTECH booth in Orlando, Florida.

In conjunction with their announcement, the AREA members were featured in a post on Forbes.com. The Forbes post goes into further detail about the partners and their use cases. The first utilities to participate in the EPRI-led research projects are Duke Energy, Consolidated Edison, UK-based EDF Energy and Korea Electric Power Corporation. EPRI expects to announce as many as 10 more utilities that will be participating in coming months.

EPRI spokesperson John Simmins, expects studies to pave the way for introduction of Augmented Reality into a wide range of use cases. A series of papers and recommendations around the introduction and adoption of Augmented Reality will be prepared as results of the research emerge over the course of the next 18 months.

A new era in enterprise Augmented Reality began when Intel CEO Brian Krzanich invited Brian Mullins, CEO of DAQRI, an AREA Founding Sponsor member, to the stage on the eve of CES 2016. During the time Mullins had available he spoke about the opportunities for Augmented Reality to increase productivity, reduce risk and costs.

The DAQRI Smart Helmet was featured to demonstrate how, using the Intel RealSense technology for depth perception and mapping and the Intel Core m7 processor for graphics processing and rending, the companies are working on a product that provides a very immersive human computer interface. More information about the relationship between Intel and DAQRI is contained in the press release issued by DAQRI. DAQRI separately announced that it has begun shipping the first production units to its preferred partner network and is conducting pilots with customers in aerospace, construction and oil and gas industries.

Many news outlets posted about the demonstration using language evoking x-ray vision technology. For example, in these posts by The Guardian and on the CNET portal the authors suggest that the technology provides superhuman powers like seeing inside the pipes. Other coverage of the announcement produced over 50 relevant stories in less than a week, a remarkable achievement by enterprise AR publicity standards.

According to a press release issued by Vuzix, the company has formed a partnership with AREA founding sponsor member Atheer and will be adding the Atheer Air Platform to the applications available for use with Vuzix M100 smart glasses for the purpose of delivering live remote expert collaboration. The Atheer AiR Suite for Enterprise will assist professionals to see checklists and step-by-step procedures in their smart glasses.

The use will be able to interaction with information using simple gestures, voice, or head motion. Further, the Air Suite brings experts to the support of a remote user via video calling features. Guidance, including real-time image annotations, permits tasks to be completed more quickly and with fewer errors.

The AiR Suite also includes a task flow authoring tool that will allow enterprise developers to create smart glasses-optimized procedures and task flows with a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Apparently investors felt that this relationship brings significant value to Vuzix. The company’s share price rose 15.17% or $1.09 following the news according to an analysis of the announcement published by the Independent Reporter the following day.

Bosch has announced that it plans to acquire a minority stake in Reflekt GmbH, a provider of Augmented Reality services and software with which it has been working for the past two years.

In the press release issued by Bosch Dr. Eng. Hans-Peter Meyen, Member of the Divisional Board of the Bosch Automotive Aftermarket division is quoted as predicting that enterprise Augmented Reality in all industries and, more specifically, in the automotive aftermarket, will save time and reduce costs. The release goes on to describe the Common Application Platform (CAP) developed by the two partners. As part of the total solution for enterprise and industry customers, Bosch offers licensing of the CAP system combined with consulting, engineering and complete authoring services.

Automotive industry news outlets covered the announcement, demonstrating the interest level in this development. In light of the global media coverage and high interest in the latest automotive technology industry trends at CES, visitors may see demonstrations and learn more about the Bosch Automotive Aftermarket division’s Augmented Reality system in the Bosch CES booth in Las Vegas Convention Center North Hall.

AREA Founding Sponsor Member Atheer announced that it has raised $14 million in Series B financing. In the title post on the Wall Street Journal Daily Startup blog, the announcement that Signatures Capital and Streamlined Ventures led the round caught the eye of investors. The round also included Fang Group, FundersClub, RONA Holdings and Shanda Group. The new funding brings Atheer’s total raised to $25 million, including $2 million raised by gesture recognition software provider ONtheGO Platforms, which it acquired earlier this month.

This is on the heels of another announcement on November 18, 2015 that AREA Founding Sponsor Member APX Labs similarly closed a round of $13M financing for its smart glasses software platform.

“Hands free” is a simple concept but when someone uses their hands in the physical world, they also need ways to “naturally” control the digital world assets they want to use. Automatic gesture recognition is one of the ways of interacting with digital content on hands-free delivery platforms. It’s not built into the optics or some other component before a smart glasses manufacturer introduces it.

For Atheer, an AREA sponsor member and provider of the AiR platform, gesture recognition is and has been a strategic differentiator. That position was deepened with the acquisition of ONtheGO Platforms, a developer of gesture recognition technology. In a press release issued by Atheer, the company states that ONtheGO adds three issued and six pending patents to Atheer’s IP portfolio of gesture interaction and rich visuality technologies, bringing the total to 14 issued patents and nearly 50 additional pending patents.

These technologies will be further integrated and gradually introduced in future editions of the Atheer AiR Glasses and the collaboration-centric AiR Enterprise Suite.

AREA member APX Labs recently announced the closing of an investment round with partners led by New Enterprise Associates. Other parties to the investment include GE Ventures, CNF Investments, Salesforce Ventures and SineWave Ventures.

According to a post on TechCrunch on the topic of the investment, GE is planning a large-scale deployment of the Skylight platform within a year. Skylight, APX Labs’ flagship product, runs on smart glasses such as Google Glass and Vuzix to control the display, camera, sensors and user inputs. Use cases include service and repairs to remote collaboration with experts.

The post also mentions that Salesforce, another APX Labs partner, sees smart glasses as a user interface for the Internet of Things, enabling visualization of key data and information in work environments.

Brian Ballard, CEO of APX Labs, expects the company to help enterprises improve workplace efficiencies across an expanding number of use cases.