Augmented Reality (AR): Pokemons are going! ‘Let’s Go’, Engineers!!

       I remember ‘Angry Birds’. It became a rage overnight. As I played it for the first time, my first expressions were ‘duh’. Simple 2D graphics, primary grade projectile motion physics and yet such a captivating output. Deja Vu for Pokemon Go. It’s a game, but strikes out the core flaw of every technology game which requires players to be rooted at one place. Entertainment plus fitness plus outdoors – this cocktail has it all and yet ‘duh’ it is such a simple concept.

I wonder what if we (engineers!) applied this concept, Augmented Reality the way Pokemon Go did, to engineering. What if we have our own applications – ‘Engineman Go’ or ‘Constructionman Go’ or ‘Inspection-man Go’ which makes our job easy and accurate and at the same time adds some element of fun and reduces stress.

From my 17 years of providing engineering software solutions (particularly visualization) to hundreds of clients in different domains from aerospace, agriculture, apparel, inspection, design, civil and construction, I am throwing out with a few ideas inspired from ‘Pokemon Go’ to prod our community into further thinking.

1. Inspection-Go: Be it a construction site, a large facility, a massive ship or a piping plant, the inspection and maintenance team could be the one who could get massively benefited from this. The staff on their rounds can point their handhelds and can get alerts and warnings in real time superimposed on their camera view. ‘Replace a bulb here’, ‘Check the connection here’ and the engineers battles and wins these ‘Pokemons’!              
2. Design-Go: When an interior decorator is surveying a site, in her head she is probably superimposing all kinds of furniture and artefacts on the view that her eye is capturing. A good designer is the one who can     do this exercise (of imagination) most accurately. What we throw in a 3D Scanner to the mix and collect the 3D data along with the camera images and  now let the designer place the objects from her library and voila everything is there all with colours, dimension and scale.
3. Apparel-Go: The reason why I hate shopping clothes is the ‘trial’ part of it. And I can’t buy without trying because I have burnt myself doing that. I’ve bought shirts that looked great on mannequins or models but looked awful on me. How about a selfie camera which lets me try different outfits in the store in real time.Scan the bar-code on the shirt, turn on the selfie mode and you can decide if you really look like a model or a misfit.

We can go on with this and never stop – like Pokemon Go addicts.The possibilities are enticing, entertaining   and endless.If you think your industry might benefit from one such possibility and ProtoTech can augment your idea to bring it to reality. Let’s Go!

Author : Rajesh Bhartiya.
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