DC Velocity - February 2017

nology consulting and analyst firm. In fact, ABI has identified logistics as the most promising vertical category for augmented reality out of a list of 12 industries that include healthcare, energy, manufacturing, education, military, retail, and entertainment.

That’s a little ironic as it was the entertainment industry that first brought AR to popular attention. Many movie fans got their first glimpse of augmented reality in the 1984 “Terminator” action film, in which a robot viewed our world through a screen that supplied digital overlays of information. It took nearly another 30 years for smartglasses with AR displays to hit consumer store shelves. That finally happened in 2013, when Alphabet Inc. released Google Glass. In 2016, AR hit the big time when Niantic Inc. released Pokémon Go, a video game that superimposed cartoon monsters on players’ smartphone-screen views of the physical world around them.

As for what makes logistics and warehousing particularly
suitable for AR, it’s partly that a DC operation is a relatively
controlled and predictable environment. “A warehouse is
busy but well planned out,” Abbruzzese said. “So you can
outfit employees with AR to improve their efficiency and
reduce errors. You can eliminate paper requirements, error
check, make sure they’re picking the right packages, and do
it all autonomously in the headset.”
Because of warehouse work’s relatively modest technical
requirements, many DCs can get by with midrange smart-
glass products from Vuzix, Epson, or Google, Abbruzzese
said. At about $1,500 per unit, these smartglasses pro-
vide all the tech needed for warehouse work without the
need to pay $3,000 to $4,000 for high-end products like
the Microsoft HoloLens, Osterhout Design
Group’s R-series, Atheer Air, or the Daqri
smart helmet.
But before the glasses really take off, a few
bugs remain to be worked out. Even the
top platforms have some basic constraints
with respect to battery life and comfort
that restrict them from being used for full
work shifts, Abbruzzese said. However, he sees that as just
a bump in the road. “Vendors are working on better form
factors, so in two or three years, we’ll start to see devices
with the potential for all-day use,” he said. “And while right
now, pilot projects for many [companies] are still limited to
one to 50 devices, that will be moving up to 50 to 100 devic-
es, or 100 to 500 devices in [the second quarter of 2017].”

TECHNOLOGY COMES INTO FOCUS

Smartglass developer and vendor Vuzix agrees that the future of vision technology in the supply chain is quickly

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