Dynabook, previously Toshiba, a PC manufacturer with a Japanese headquarters hopes to connect South African field workers using smart glasses. Ronald Ravel, director of business-to-business at Dynabook South Africa said in an email conversation with ITWeb.
Ravel says that the South African market offers a significant opportunity for the products, despite the fact that the company has yet to ship these smart glasses to the country.“Dynabook has a solutions team that can immediately provide all support in South Africa for both the technical and commercial aspects,” he says.
The company intends to charge a starting price of $2 400 (R40 200) for its AR100 and DE200 smart eyewear. These tools allow for real-time communication between field employees and experts in the office as well as the ability to demonstrate situations as they develop.
The company explains that distant specialists may immediately give training, assistance, and data to the field worker in response. Grand View Research estimates that the global market for smart glass was worth $5.13 billion in 2021 and will rise at a CAGR of 10.3% from 2022 to 2030.
ChromoGenics, Corning Incorporated, Gauzy, and Gentex Corporation are a few notable participants in the sector. “Expert knowledge is sparse and is a problem in collaboration in technical work fields on vast grounds,” says Ravel. We provide a hands-free solution by connecting field workers with an expert colleague miles away or in different time zones.”
In order to optimize processes, link field workers, increase safety, and provide training, Dynabook observes that the ongoing digital transformation of the manufacturing and logistics industries is resulting in more realistic and interesting work environments.
“Enterprise smart glasses adoption is not only predicted to grow in the coming years, but that growth will accelerate as spending starts to transition away from mobile augmented reality and towards head-worn, hands-free, augmented reality,” Ravel says.
“Indeed, 67% of manufacturers from our own research said they were likely to deploy smart glasses within the next three years, with improved information sharing and collaboration (48%) and hands-free functionality (47%) being the main reasons behind this decision.”
Ravel explains that smart glasses with “see-what-I-see” functionality can enable a technician or engineer to connect with a larger network of remote experts and receive helpful support and guidance to complete a task when they are on-site and need to make a decision that is either time-sensitive or requires a high level of safety.
“Secondly, additional capabilities from AR [augmented reality] smart glasses can be accessed wherever and whenever they are needed, without disrupting the mechanic’s workflow. Thirdly, the rise of edge computing, the increased convergence of physical assets into digital assets, and the integration of 4G/5G connectivity will also play a role in making smart glasses more adoptable.”
He continues by saying that over the past two years, the use of technology like AR smart glasses in manufacturing facilities has increased.
“Incidents which were introduced by lockdowns and reduced global travel meant businesses were forced to evolve at a faster rate. These circumstances resulted in companies looking for increasingly sophisticated collaboration tools to improve communication over the long term.
“AR smart glasses can enhance the new environment of hybrid working, which is here to stay, by enabling faster and better connections that work within the changing dynamics of a post-pandemic world.”
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