Augmented Reality, Hologram-like Images Enter the Workplace
MIT is working to hasten and improve the process by constructing a multimillion-dollar Visual Analytics Lab where corporations and researchers there can experiment with computer-generated hologram-like images and interactive touch-screen walls embedded with layers of supply-chain data that is often obscured. That information could range from customer and product information to population, socioeconomic data and real-time traffic, weather and social-media data.
The 500-square-foot lab is expected to be built at the university’s renovated Center for Transportation and Logistics in Cambridge, Mass., funded in part by corporations with which MIT already has existing relationships, and open for experimentation to both corporations and researchers across MIT departments beginning late 2017.
Spearheading the project is MIT researcher and 30-year-old German native Matthias Winkenbach, who holds a Ph.D. in logistics and supply-chain management and is an expert in last-mile logistics, or the movement of goods to their ultimate destination.
“AR can be a game changer in data and analytics because it’s so much more immersive,” Dr. Winkenbach said. “You’re…experiencing much more than you’re analyzing.”
... according to Forrester ResearchInc. Large companies will spend $3.6 billion on smart glasses in 2025, up from $6 million in 2016, according to Forrester. The global 3-D imaging market, which includes holograms, is expected to grow from $4.9 billion in 2015 to $16.6 billion by 2020, according to Markets and Markets, a research firm in India.
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