Augumenta SmartPanel Puts New Face on Augmented Reality for Industrial Applications

The Augumenta SmartPanel allows users with smartglasses to see information and use hand gestures to operate machine controls on a panel that appears as a blank surface to other people. The easy to set up Augumenta SmartPanel gives enterprise customers and developers an unprecedented level of flexibility paired with privacy and security. The panel is completely configurable in software and only an authorized smartglass user is able to view panel data and controls. Additionally, panels can contain different information and controls based on the user's role. This is useful in applications as varied as medical monitoring and diagnostics, industrial machinery control and test/measurement equipment operation.

In demonstrations this week at AWE 2016 with ODG (Booth #1), the new Augumenta SmartPanel interface running on R-7 smartglasses controls a robotic arm using such simple gestures as finger pointing and "pinching" of control knobs.

"The R-7 smartglasses and the entire ecosystem created by ODG are driving enterprise adoption of AR for serious work, which today is the perfect use case both for our SDK and for the new gesture control interface we built with our tools," said Tero Aaltonen, Co-Founder and CEO of Augumenta. "Augumenta's goal is to provide simple and intuitive interaction environments for augmented reality, and we are really pleased to be able to collaborate with ODG to accelerate AR deployments."

"A head-worn device like the R-7 that is mobile, tether-free and light weight is critical to workers in the field," said Pete Jameson, COO at ODG. "Augumenta's Android based gesture recognition functionality works with a single camera and has low power requirements, yet provides a sophisticated experience that increases worker productivity with seamless hardware integration. We are expecting even greater demand now that companies also can implement the Augumenta SmartPanel solution."

Accelerating Adoption

The concept for the Augumenta SmartPanel interface arose as part of ongoing work for a leading supplier of industrial devices and control systems. Augumenta will work with both in-house and external development groups and software providers to design and integrate custom panel interfaces for varied use cases in enterprise, industrial and ultimately consumer AR applications. These interfaces can incorporate custom widgets designed for target applications, which can be designed using common 3D modeling tools and imported to the panel.

In addition to launching the Augumenta SmartPanel this week at AWE 2016, the Augumenta Interaction Platform SDK is being demonstrated with Epson (Booth #5) on Moverio BT-300 smartglasses. Additionally, Finnish developer 3D Studio Blomberg (Booth #214) is demonstrating a field service knowledge sharing solution developed with the Augumenta SDK.

The Augumenta Software Development Kit (SDK) is the only developer toolkit to allow integration of both gesture control and smart surfaces that appear on the palm of the user's hands, providing the basis for a greatly enhanced and more productive user interface for augmented reality work spaces. All Augumenta interaction platforms will operate with both traditional and 3D cameras for a wide range of interactions on 2D and 3D displays. They can be deployed on any smartglass platform running Android, Linux, POSIX and Windows operating systems. Augumenta also provides APIs for C/C++, Java and Unity3D, as well as sample code for implementation on the Metaio, Unity and Vuforia platforms.

About Augumenta

Augumenta develops interaction solutions for wearable electronics. Combining hand gestures and augmented reality, the company's software enables new ways for smartglass users to control applications and devices. Headquartered in Oulu, Finland, with a support hub in Taipei, Taiwan, Augumenta licenses its products to global OEMs, enterprise customers, integrators and developers. More information and registration for the company newsletter is here: www.augumenta.com.