COVID 19 has accelerated the adoption of several technologies during 2020. Among them, we can find those related to keeping people communicated at a safe distance, others related to avoiding the movement of workers, and others specifically aimed to work under risky conditions.
Smart Glasses are basically like a mobile phone, mounted on the user’s head, allowing him to access all the device features with hands-free commands. They are lightweight, connected to the Internet, don’t block the user’s view, and don’t interfere with their current activities. A frontal camera allows the user to show to somewhere elsewhere, what he is seeing in real-time. In fact, all these features provide users with super-man capabilities related to access to knowledge, support, and communication. A little closer to cyborg tech, without pinching the users’ skin.
Most of these devices show a small screen near the user’s left or right eye, where information is shown, a small menu to select apps, view docs, images, videos, or watch live videos when having a support call. We must differentiate these devices, from Mixed Reality devices, like Hololens or Magic Leap, where we can see content in front of both of our eyes, and at the same time we see different things when we are looking to the left, right, or behind us. That’s called Spatial Computing, which enables a large number of use cases and solutions, which I’ll cover in another article.
Getting back to the “standard” smart glasses, we can find deployments previous to this pandemic in manufacturing, quality, health, education. COVID 19 boosted the speed of adoption and created more use cases.
These solutions have allowed companies to continue working despite the social distancing requirements and also saved money and resources not only during this pandemic stage but also to continue saving them when in the post-pandemic stage.
Nowadays we can find smart glasses in these scenarios
Quality Control: QA specialists use them to inspect and report faster.
Manufacturing: frontline employees use them to follow step-by-step instructions for not regular operations
Maintenance: where employees follow previously defined instructions to repair/maintain equipment, engines, cars, etc., or receive real-time support from experts from another location, for repairs that are outside of their capabilities.
Health 1: doctors accessing infectious areas, or in surgeries, can receive directions from professionals away/abroad.
Health 2: doctors in infectious areas, can teach in real-time new professionals about the steps for taking care of Covid 19 (or other diseases) patients.
Health 3: Covid 19 researchers from different universities and centers, communicating and sharing information faster.
According to what our clients’ employees comment, and also to what other researches show, the users find this type of smart glasses comfortable, reliable, and incredibly useful for bringing information and security for them. Training the users correctly is the first step to make them feel safe when using these new solutions.
