PTC announces release of Vuforia Expert Capture AR solution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRMcB9W0B5w

April 1, 2019 – PTC has announced the release of its Vuforia Expert Capture augmented reality (AR) solution, which is designed to improve workforce productivity, quality, safety, and compliance.

Vuforia Expert Capture provides up-to-date, relevant information to workers in a real-world context of their daily work environment. Knowledge can be captured on-the-fly as needs arise, without causing disruption to high-value workers, and no advance preparation or development efforts are required to create step-by-step instructions for hands-on training and task guidance.

Captured procedures can be fine-tuned in a secure, SaaS-based environment and then dynamically delivered on RealWear HMT-1, Microsoft HoloLens, and mobile devices to front-line workers across a business. Spatial intelligence from HoloLens’ location-aware functionality can be leveraged to safely guide front-line workers through multi-step procedures at different locations without compromising speed and accuracy, according to PTC.

Over the next decade, 10 million manufacturing jobs will likely be needed, yet millions are expected to go unfilled, according to a report from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute. An exodus of retiring workers, combined with increasing product complexity and customer demand, will require manufacturers to take new approaches for delivering relevant information to front-line workers. With this skills gap threatening the manufacturing industry, more effective knowledge transfer from existing subject matter experts (SMEs) is critical, according to PTC.

“We are excited to offer industrial enterprises a new way to use AR to leverage the tribal knowledge of SMEs and help alleviate the skills gap crisis threatening today’s industrial enterprise,” said Mike Campbell, EVP, augmented reality products, PTC. “Vuforia Expert Capture is a high-value, out-of-the-box solution that accelerates AR content creation that enables manufacturers to not only improve the accuracy and speed at which workers successfully complete new or unfamiliar tasks, but also to reduce training costs and time to productivity.”

The company states that Vuforia Expert Capture is a solution for manufacturing environments where existing service/maintenance/changeover procedures for equipment are unavailable. SMEs can record directions on how to perform critical tasks, which can then be shared with new or redeployed workers for on-the-job guidance.

DP Prakash, Head of Innovation in AI ML AR VR, from the CIO Office of Global Foundries, said: “Global Foundries has embraced augmented reality across its worldwide factories as one of the key levers of productivity improvements in a competitive marketplace”. He added, “With Vuforia Expert Capture, we are increasingly able to capture the wisdom of our workforce on the factory floors. This Vuforia capability speeds up the time to document Standard Operating Procedures by up to 10 times, and helps reduce training time for employees in the classroom and factory by 50 percent.”

PTC stated that it expects Vuforia Expert Capture to be generally available at the end of May 2019.

Video credit: PTC/BusinessWire/YouTube

About the author

Sam Sprigg

Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.