When I started working on display technology, my initial apprehension was, “do I really want to work on gluing people more to screens?” But as I learned more, I realized that augmented reality actually does the opposite: it enables us to be immersed in the real world while taking advantage of computation.
The COVID-19 pandemic surprisingly highlighted the power of AR. Here’s an article by the Wall Street Journal on how high-tech companies have benefited:
Coronavirus Makes AR’s Potential a Reality for Chip Makers
Summary: Field service engineers supporting Intel could not travel to the Intel fab. So on-site engineers donned AR headsets and worked on equipment while connected to the engineers in Germany.
Here’s are more examples of how AR is augmenting manufacturing capabilities at GE:
Virtual Reality Bites: 6 Ways Industry Is Harnessing The Power Of VR And AR
I believe that in the future, the two-person team will be a typical arrangement. One person will be deployed in the field doing hands-on work. The other person provides support by relaying – and displaying – whatever data is needed by the field operative.
At Lumiode, we are developing the lowest-temperature micro-LED manufacturing process. Traditionally, individual LED pixels are manufactured and then “picked and placed” on an integrated circuit backplane. The integrated circuit processing is usually too hot for LED processing. But our process is unique in that we are able to develop LED’s and their circuits monolithically- from a single piece of material. By doing this, we avoid yield losses from the mass transfer and enable much smaller form factors.
Enzo Borja Mangubat 