Mission Impossible: Hollywood Gets it Right with Augmented Reality

A few months back I posted an article demonstrating that Augmented Reality (AR) is already here and experienced by anyone who watches sports or drives a car.?AR is everywhere, and it is quickly demonstrating its value in service repair, operations maintenance, retail services, IT service management, and healthcare/life sciences.

In the new MI movie Dead Reckoning Part 1, Hollywood does a good job of showing how AR can be applied in a wearable such as the glasses worn by Ethan Hunt.?In reality, wearable AR technology has not quite reached the level of sophistication shown in the movie.?But we all love the vision of the future that Hollywood so often accurately predicts.?

Working with MI7, US intelligence tries to locate Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) at Abu Dhabi Airport using facial-recognition software, but every time they think that they have found him, it turns out to be someone else — a handy trick pulled off by Hunt’s pals Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames).?Meanwhile, The Entity handily steps in at will to scrub Gabriel’s image from the live video footage, even hacking into the augmented reality (AR) glasses worn by Ethan and impersonating other voices to trick him.

While AR wearables still have a lot of glitches and companies like Lenovo, Realwear, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are on the verge of something less than wearing a computer on your head.?However, AR on your tablet and on your cell phone supported by both Android and IOS are already being used extensively to provide AR-guided support for all kinds of technical and maintenance operations functions in nearly every industry sector.?Even life sciences companies are exploring how to utilize AR to guide healthcare technicians using highly sophisticated testing, diagnostic, and surgical instruments.

Simon Newman, a member of the International Cyber Expo’s Advisory Council, states: “There aren’t any affordable mainstream (AR Wearable) models yet. Neither Apple nor Meta is on the mark just yet. At the moment, AR and VR headsets are just for the gaming community, there is no practical use for them.”

While Simon may be right about the practical use of AR wearable, AR hand-held and hands-free devices are fully operational and already being applied to improve first-time repair rates, reduce mean time to repair, and completely eliminate the need to deploy subject matter experts to the field.?

Companies like Xerox are using AR with impressive results.??John Perry, Vice President Global Delivery Transformation and Technology, Xerox has this to say about CareAR, an AR solution that so impressed Xerox that they bought the company:

“CareAR has been in use at Xerox since early 2021 essentially providing a breakthrough in the remote support process resulting in faster resolution, shorter service events, and deflected site visits. CareAR has not only improved our customer service experience but also has given world-class augmented reality tools to our service community to improve their effectiveness and satisfaction, as well as helping us meet Xerox productivity and profit goals.”

The software shown in Dead Reckoning is used by police worldwide today for facial recognition — and the AR software used by Xerox is available to everyone now.

Craig Nelson is a Solutions Consulting Leader for CareAR and is a former Partner with EY, ISG, and Alsbridge. He is a thought leader in Digital Transformation and provides consulting services to companies looking to realize the benefits of AI/AR technologies to change the way they do business.