Microsoft brings to Spain its versatile mixed reality device HoloLens 2

The company has also introduced Azure Object Anchors technology, by which HoloLens 2 can more richly recognize objects in the real world for interaction in mixed reality.

Microsoft announced at Ignite 2020, your annual event for developers and IT professionals, HoloLens availability 2 in Spain, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"We are looking forward to what people can do with HoloLens 2 and very excited to have enough production to be able to supply this new set of countries", Alex Kipman has pointed out, technical fellow Microsoft's.

The company has also announced a new mixed reality service, called Azure Object Anchors -available at Preview private- thanks to which HoloLens 2 You can recognize an object in the real world and map its relevant instructions or images without needing expert knowledge or the use of barcodes to provide additional information.

HoloLens space travel 2

The American aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin is developing Orion, the interplanetary ship of the fish trap, that will be used in the quest Aremis II, whose goal is to establish a stable presence on the Moon and pave the way for humanity's arrival on Mars.

Building a spaceship requires millions of complex tasks, each with zero margin of error, ranging from fixing electrical wiring in position to accurately locating thousands of small sensors and devices that measure the performance of the ship under stress.

To do this, and specifically to assemble the seats of the spacecraft, the Lockheed Martin team did not need instructions on paper or tablets with manuals, since all the necessary resources – from the animations of how the parts had to fit into the engineering schemes, up to the specific tightening torque required for each screw- were represented in front of their eyes thanks to the HoloLens mixed reality glasses 2 that they were wearing.

The devices left technicians hands-free to handle parts and tools, while they could interact with HoloLens 2 with voice commands that guided them step by step. All this, at the same time they saw the holographic instructions superimposed on their field of vision, and on the pieces where they carried out each intervention.

The aeronautical company has obtained significant savings, both in time and costs with HoloLens 2, since technicians did not have to interrupt their tasks to consult manuals or to write on a computer.

In a critical work, such as the assembly of the heat shield that protects astronauts when they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, Written instructions are extremely complex.

"Usually a technician spends about half of the time reviewing engineering schemes, the steps to follow and to enter data on your PC, while the rest of the time he spends installing each component. With HoloLens 2, we've been able to reduce the amount of time technicians spend analyzing data by over 90%.", explains Colin Sipe, senior manager at Lockheed Martin.

For example, as part of critical verification processes, technicians have to put down their tools and go back to a PC to dump the information about the step they just completed. With HoloLens 2 They can use a simple voice command to have the device take a photo or record a video, that can be used for validation purposes, quality control or training without interrupting workflow.

HoloLens 2 and the use of mixed reality also achieve a drastic reduction in editing errors. In this sense, Lockheed Martin has not experienced any errors and, thanks to this, it has not been necessary to carry out any intervention in the tasks in which the specialists used them.

"The fact that we haven't had any mistakes in all these activities is fantastic. Usually, When we consider new technologies, we ask ourselves if there is an improvement in quality, whether it's faster or cheaper, and most maintain that only two of the three advantages can be obtained. With HoloLens 2 We have discovered that we can achieve all three", says Shelley Peterson, who oversees the company's mixed reality initiatives.

Applications in different industries

Since last November, Microsoft began delivering HoloLens 2 to its customers and, during these months, the demand for devices and solutions, especially during the spread of COVID-19, has increased. An example of this is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, that enables collaboration and problem-solving in a shared mixed reality environment being in different physical places.

Like this, If a field worker who is assembling a spacecraft, an airplane, A truck or repairing an elevator encounters a complex incident, Another specialist, that can be in the same location or hundreds of miles away, can, via HoloLens 2, assess the situation as if you were there to work collaboratively on resolving the issue.

This is also the case with the care of COVID-19 patients in the Imperial College Healthcare NHS in the UK, where they're using HoloLens 2, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft Teams to minimize potential exposure to the virus for healthcare workers.

With HoloLens 2, A doctor can treat the patient in person, while the device broadcasts via live video to a computer screen in a neighboring room, which allows other doctors to make a complete diagnosis while maintaining a safe distance.

In the United States, Mercedes-Benz You're also using HoloLens 2 to help your dealer technicians repair vehicles faster and more efficiently. Using Remote Assistance, can fix a problem in real time.

"In some industries we have seen that companies are willing to take a qualitative leap with HoloLens 2. In a time when travel can be risky, It's much easier to 'teleport' to a place and see things through the eyes of the operators.", adds Alex Kipman.

Other articles on Lockheed Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, fish trap, National Health Service UK-NHS