INDUSTRIAL REALITY 2019
The first edition of the ‘Industrial Reality’ event took place on Thursday, the 14th of March in The Gallery in Enschede. With around 150 participants, the Fieldlab status was awarded to the Industrial Reality Hub by Smart Industry. The award ceremony of the Fieldlab status took place in an interactive VR session. The aim of the event was to generate more awareness in Dutch industry about the competencies of AR / VR companies. The audience could experience the possibilities in 10 demo stands.
About Industrial Reality Hub
Industrial Reality Hub is a collaboration between the companies Controllab, OVSoftware, SeriousVR, Recreate, Twinsense360, Xsens, The Virtual Dutch Men, Benchmark Electronics, Demcon-Nymus3D and the VR Lab of the University of Twente, led by development company Oost NL. Together these partners offer all the technological competencies in the field of Augmented and Virtual Reality that are necessary to implement business process innovations. “Augmented and Virtual Reality is a new way to discover the world,” says Christian Kleijn, who acts as chairman of the Industrial Reality Hub on behalf of Controllab. We have deliberately joined forces with various specialist companies to effectively apply Augmented and Virtual Reality in industry, construction and healthcare. As a Hub, we want to challenge the business community to come to us with issues and dilemmas, for which we can offer appropriate solutions with our expertise and conduct research into the possibilities of today.
Award ceremony of the Fieldlab status in VR
Completely in line with the competences of the Hub, Fieldlab status was awarded in a Virtual Reality session by Willem Offerhaus, chairman of the Smart Industry Steering Group. “We want to put the Netherlands on the international map as an innovation country. Clustering of knowledge and expertise in the field of Augmented and Virtual Reality, by a broad group consisting of specialist companies and knowledge institutions, contributes to accelerating technological developments. We must be aware of this The competition is huge both in Europe and globally, and collaborations such as the Industrial Reality Hub ensure that innovations are implemented faster, increasing the chance of international recognition as an AR / VR hotspot, making the Industrial Reality Hub unique in the Netherlands and distinctive in Europe. Eastern Netherlands forms the link from the Netherlands to Germany.”
Guest speaker Microsoft
Martin Tirion, Senior Software Engineer from Microsoft was the guest speaker at the launch event. He presented the Hololens 2 and indicated that the worldwide market for business use of AR / VR is estimated at 64 billion euros. “Mixed Reality is the driver of digitization, with the enterprise market being the most interesting. Augmented and Virtual Reality play an important role as technology in unlocking huge amounts of data and gaining more insight into information flows. Industrial Reality Hub closes there excellent with her competences.” Microsoft highlighted three main improvements made to the device: immersiveness, ergonomics and business friendliness. HoloLens 2 has a diagonal field of view of 52 degrees, improving over the 34 degree field of view of the first edition of HoloLens, while keeping a resolution of 47 pixels per degree.
Interactive parallel sessions
The parallel sessions were an important part of the program. Visitors to the launch event were able to register for three different sessions. During the ‘New Business Models’ parallel session, SeriousVR and The Virtual Dutchmen showed how AR / VR makes new revenue models possible. During the ‘Virtual Industry’ session, Controllab, Twinsense360, Nymus360 and the UTwente showed the different possibilities of AR / VR during the development and use of industrial products. During the meeting on ‘Future Skills’ various applications were discussed in the education, training and support of people by Xsens, Recreate and OV software.
The successful launch event ended with a call from coordinator Robbert Jan Kooij. “The members of the Industrial Reality Hub are happy to receive concrete cases and issues to be tackled through an experiment in the Field Lab. The members jointly offer a quick scan for this.”