Military AR Display Now Applied in Google Glass
This post is also available in: 
עברית (Hebrew)
A head-up display technology once developed for US soldiers in the field has become a commercial augmented reality (AR) platform used in various business scenarios.
It was developed when Battlefield Telecommunications Systems (BTS) was tasked as the US government’s software provider for biometric force predictions, meaning real-time data displayed to a soldier’s headset to indicate whether the person in front of them is a friend or foe.
Three execs at BTS saw the potential to take the AR technology at work and apply it far beyond the battlefield. They left to found what is now Upskill. More than seven years later, the company’s software underpins Google Glass Enterprise and several of the most popular enterprise AR devices on the market, customized for a wide range of applications. The startup now creates software for companies like Boeing, Coca-Cola, and GE.
The industrial AR platform Skylight is deployed in production across an array of fieldwork, heavy manufacturing, and warehousing environments. The technology augments workers’ experiences with custom voice and gesture-driven apps, and provides HD audio and video feeds for a first-person view into everything from field service training to constructing jet engines, according to pcmag.com.
The AR software evolved to suit specialized industrial use cases, giving workers heads-up work or training instructions. Headsets could also receive real-time notifications showing changes in data and events going on around them that the user on a factory floor or in the field may not be able to see directly. Most importantly for the businesses deploying AR headsets at scale, Upskill is hardware-agnostic and syncs with enterprise IT systems to integrate all the data these wearable devices collect.
The company currently services four major industries: aerospace and defense customers like Boeing, Lockheed Martin; heavy manufacturing (GE, carmakers); logistics scenarios like shipping and warehousing; and field service scenarios such as Coca-Cola technicians using smart glasses to service their bottling plants. The company is one of the partner sellers for Google Glass Enterprise.
One of their latest products, Skylight Live, gives each person with the headset the ability to broadcast what they are seeing through their smart glasses.
