Ads

Home Irish tech How AR is changing how industry operates, Patrick Liddy

How AR is changing how industry operates, Patrick Liddy

March 09, 2020
Patrick Liddy, AR

What is your own background briefly?

I studied Electrical Engineering at UCD before going on to complete a Diploma in Business from DIT. After several years in engineering and energy, I founded Activation Energy, a software platform that would bring innovation in energy efficiency to the electricity market. Following an acquisition by Nasdaq listed Enel X North America (formerly EnerNOC) in 2014, with my help, the Dublin based team became the largest provider of the service in Ireland and the UK.

That role required us to deploy and maintain a lot of electrical metering and control equipment around the country, where I learned how challenging it was to recruit suitably experienced technical staff.

When I first encountered Augmented Reality (AR) Smart Glasses, I was convinced the technology could help with issues I was seeing in my work, and eventually change the way industry gets work done. In 2018, I re-entered the entrepreneurial space with a team of tech gurus to found UtilityAR, an AR software developer which creates augmented reality solutions for life sciences, Industry and other organizations who manage large portfolios of physical assets.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

In terms of the technology side of things, not so much. I am interested in technology, of course, but my main focus is problem-solving and constantly tweaking things so daily tasks become easier. I don’t do VR or gaming, the things you would associate with this sector; my interest lies in how to make day to day activities run more smoothly in the most efficient and cost effective way.

How was the last 12 months?

Firstly, I have two small boys at home who take up far more time than I have! Starting a business at the same time is not well planned, but the last year has been very busy with very positive responses. Through UtilityAR, I have been able to further explore AR and create something I believe will help increase productivity and save time within targeted businesses.

The response to this latest endeavour has been great and I think it pushes us to go bigger. I hope to explore a few more of my own ideas towards the end of the year.

Between this and my children, I have kept on my toes!

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

My main goal right now is to workers the information they need when they need it to help them get their work done. For example, the AR glasses can do this by using our Remote Adviser Video Calling software to link to their offsite expert staff and vendors, with their onsite workers. Match that with school runs, lego and Pokemon, I have my hands full.

How is AR changing how industry operates?

I think AR is changing how industry operates, but not how you might think. AR is the right tool for a job that already existed, but for which we were using the wrong tool. Long ago, industry realised the importance of standardised training and procedure to improve the quality of their outcomes.

The current method to do work is through paper-based or tablet-based solutions but this has its drawbacks as these options are often not available to the worker. For similar reasons, the reliability of records gathered by workers to document what happened is not great. Augmented Reality Glasses offer a much better form-factor for manual workers.

Similarly, when workers encounter a problem they have the option of using their phone to communicate with their colleagues. We all know the frustrating nature of using a phone as a tool to problem-solve, and in many cases the option of having the expert travel to the site is preferred. Using Augmented Reality Glasses and our software the exact nature of the problem can be visible in real-time and the problem is fixed quickly without the need for a second visit.

How in future will AR change consumers’ interaction with their digital devices?

I believe that we are just a few years away from consumer-ready Augmented Reality Glasses from phone manufacturers. Those glasses will be aesthetically pleasing and provide us with hands-free access to all the information we currently get from our phones. The addition of a forward-facing camera and other sensors will mean that the glasses will be able to show us contextually relevant information and to position it more appropriately to our surroundings.

They may recognise the flowers we are looking at, the product we are seeing or the friend we haven’t met for some time, giving us helpful guidance with text visible just above them. They can also teach us how to fix our appliances, bake a cake or assemble furniture, recognising how we are doing and adjusting or guiding us to a positive outcome. It’s all very exciting stuff!

For about the last six years or more, AR has been heralded as the next step in technology, and yet, it is still not as widely used as it might have been expected. What are the barriers to it not rolling out as quickly as the hype had predicted?

With regards to consumer applications, we believe the equipment simply isn’t ready.

In enterprise and industry, we are seeing great interest and uptake where there is a clear value proposition and the benefits are unmistakable to the company. That said, companies are flooded with improvement projects they should be doing at the moment, from energy efficiency, health and safety and Artificial Intelligence. All are very worthy projects. Sometimes they can only digest these changes at a particular rate, and we need to show how our projects will make the other one easier to achieve or provide the greatest payback.

How can people find out more about you personally and your work?

Best to check out www.utilityar.com or contact me via LinkedIn.

Best to check out www.utilityar.com or contact me via LinkedIn or Twitter.

Who and where do you get inspiration from?

I would advise people to read the book “Rainbows End” by Vernor Vinge. It’s a sci-fi novel from 2006 that predicted so much of this technology and has many more ideas that seem increasingly plausible today

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 30,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking



Irish Tech News https://ift.tt/39I1x6I
Tags :

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.