- Hello, I'm Linda Dunn,
coming to you from the LG Digital Studio
at the Georgetown University
School of Continuing Studies.
In focus today, augmented
reality in supply chain.
I'm joined by Faisal Raza,
Vice President of Client
Success at Upskill,
which builds enterprise software
for augmented reality
devices like smart glasses.
Welcome.
- Thank you for having me.
- Well, great.
So, a lot of folks have heard the term
virtual reality or VR due to gaming,
but can you explain
what augmented or AR is?
- Absolutely, augmented
reality refers to two concepts.
One is assisted reality,
which are smart glass devices like these
that have a screen in front of them
and you can see all the information
that you need in the screen,
or similar devices like
the Google Glass device,
again, the screen in front,
so you put on the device,
and you can see the information
that you need on the screen
versus having to look down at
your phone or anything else.
The second component is mixed reality,
which is a little bit
more immersive experience,
like Microsoft HoloLens, that
you put in front of your eyes,
and you can still interact
with the real world,
but you have the information
that you need in your peripheral.
And virtual reality is actually
completely disconnected
from the real world.
So when you put an Oculus
Go or a VR headset on,
you are not in the real
environment that you're in.
You're in a virtual environment.
So that's kinda the key difference.
We work primarily with AR,
so we work with smart
glasses, assisted reality,
and then we work with HoloLens,
which is more of a mixed-reality device.
- Great, really allows you
to do two things at once
with augmented reality.
- Absolutely.
And our platform and our technology
is built for the hands-on workforce.
It's critical for us to
make sure that the workers
are aware of their environment
around them for safety,
for interaction with
real-world objects, et cetera.
So we primarily focus on
enabling the hands-on workforce
to do their jobs better
and make their jobs easier.
- Great.
All right, so how might a
tool, like Upskill Skylight,
assist organizations that
have a global supply chain?
- Absolutely, so, I'll break that,
my answer into two parts.
So on the supply chain side,
we predominantly work with warehouses
in the pick and pack use case.
So what that means is
you're picking up inventory
across the warehouse, and
today most of the folks
will go around the
warehouse on a forklift,
and they have a handheld barcode scanner
that they look on the screen
to see what they're picking,
which aisle, then they go to that aisle,
they look again like where the box is,
and then they verify the box
with the barcode scanner.
With our solution, you basically
put on your smart glasses,
all the information that you need
is in your line of sight here,
and you have a ring scanner on your hand,
so you're basically completely hands-free,
and you're able to pick
up boxes with both hands,
which we were probably
supposed to do as humans.
But pick up boxes with both hands
and put them on the forklift
so you don't have to put any device down.
You don't have to set something
on the forklift, et cetera.
So that's our main use
case, across warehouses,
and we work with large logistics companies
like Ryder and DHL,
predominantly on that use case.
But in addition, think
of the smart glasses
as a very versatile tool.
So it's not just for pick and pack,
but it can also be used
for maintenance and repair.
Each one of these has a camera.
So if your forklift
breaks down in the middle
of the large warehouse, you
can call someone on their phone
and they can see through the glasses
what you're looking at and
help you fix it in real time.
So there are pick and pack applications,
maintenance applications,
kitting applications
for if you wanna put
together like some items
for a particular type of component,
and also like cycle counting,
receiving and shipping, et cetera.
So just think of it as a computer
that is a wearable device
that enables your workforce
to be hands-free in the warehouse.
So that's one major category
of use cases that we work on.
And then the last one, which
is coming up really quickly,
which is actually online
grocery order fulfillment.
So you order your groceries online,
someone goes into a store,
picks up your groceries for you
and delivers it curbside or to your house.
Today, they use a handheld.
And you can imagine, if
you're looking for soup,
the low sodium or high sodium,
it's very difficult to kinda keep glancing
back at your phone
- Sure.
- and trying to figure out
where this is.
- Absolutely.
- These devices make it
in your line of sight
so you're able to identify much faster
and with a higher quality.
- That's fantastic.
- (mumbles)
- So, you're talking about how something
is up and coming.
- Right.
- What do you foresee, really,
within the next two to
five years in the AR realm
with regards to supply chain?
- Absolutely, I think there
are a couple of things
with regards to supply chains.
I think, first, is right now,
these smart glasses connect
with Bluetooth ring scanners
or other Bluetooth devices.
I think in the future,
as warehouses introduce more IoT devices,
smart glasses can actually
connect to those in real time
and help you better located
your items, et cetera.
That's one.
Second is Qualcomm,
that's a big chipmaker,
is now making processors
for smart glasses,
and that drastically
improves their performance,
battery life, cognitive load, et cetera.
And I think the final pieces
which right now, most of the
glasses have screens on them,
but glasses are moving
towards more of looking
more like your actual prescription glasses
like the ones that you have here.
(Linda laughs)
You can actually put them on
and there's a screen in front of you
so they are much lighter fit,
they're more adapted to your
eye movement, et cetera.
And I think as we move along
you will see more and more
not just applications in the supply chain,
outside of pick and pack
which is the predominant one,
but also you'll see more
natural looking glasses
that are more adapted to
your hands-on workforce
and can help them even drive more gains,
more efficiency gains and
more quality improvements.
- Great.
_ So that's what we think at
Upskill is the next future.
And I think, last piece
is, mixed reality devices
that I spoke about earlier
like the Microsoft HoloLens,
et cetera, they will be
much more predominant
in the enterprise than they are now
where you will have a
fully immersive experience
but still be able to interact
with your environment around you.
- It's an exciting time for supply chain
and for augmented reality.
- It is very exciting.
- And mixed reality.
- Absolutely it is, absolutely.
- Well I'm very glad you
were able to join us today.
We've appreciated hearing all about
the interesting developments
that are happening
so thank you very much Faisal.
- Thank you you so much for having me.
- Appreciate it.
- I really appreciate it
and I'm really excited
about this new program.
- And thanks everyone
out there for watching.
Stay tuned for more from
the LG Digital Studio
at Georgetown SCS.
