Just as AR is augmenting our everyday lives, it’s also augmenting the lives of engineers and manufacturing professionals. Here’s a primer on the technology and how it’s being used in engineering.
What is augmented reality (AR)?
Augmented reality is a type of spatial computing that adds a graphical overlay onto an image of the real world. AR goes beyond a heads-up display, or HUD, in which static info is presented to the user overtop their surroundings. A hallmark of AR, and of spatial computing more broadly, is that the graphical output depends on the user’s position in space.
For instance, an AR application that places a virtual sofa in your living room would respond to your position in that room. Whether looking through a phone, tablet or head-mounted display (HMD), you could move around the virtual sofa and see it from different angles while it remained fixed in place.
If you were using the highest-end AR hardware with an exceptionally photorealistic 3D model, you could be fooled into thinking you really had a new sofa—at least until you tried to sit on it. For engineers using AR, that level of photorealism is often desired.
How are engineers and manufacturers using AR?
One popular way that engineers are using AR is to visualize their designs as they would exist in the real world. Automotive engineers, for example, could use an AR headset to see a life-size model of their latest vehicle right before their eyes.
With the proper hardware and software, they could even map the lighting and reflections of the real world onto the AR model—heightening the illusion of a real, physical vehicle. In this way, AR can provide a level of design insight not easily achieved without laborious prototyping.
Another emerging use of AR is as a tool for factory commissioning, maintenance and training. AR applications can present information about a piece of equipment on top of that equipment, such as visual instructions for how to operate it safely or change out a part. Similarly, AR could help plan or optimize a factory layout by revealing how a piece of equipment would physically fit in a space.
Pour lire l'article complet : The fundamentals of augmented reality (AR) for engineering - Engineering.com
