Seeing across the world with Augmented Reality with Patrick Liddy | UtilityAR #33

Augmented Reality sounds so exciting. Put on the magic glasses and escape to another world…..

But let’s come down to earth. It’s certainly a technology that promises amazing things and, with the right application, can bring huge new benefits to business. In this podcast, our host Oliver Dowson is talking with Patrick Liddy, a founder of UtilityAR. They’ve developed a great application of Augmented Reality – or AR as it’s abbreviated – for engineering.

Patrick is an energy engineer by profession, and a true innovator. Back in 2006, he founded Innovation Energy in Dublin, one of the first electricity demand response systems in Europe. He went on to sell that to a US corporation before, more recently, starting UtilityAR.

When you have a moment, take a look at Patrick’s video that we’ve posted on our growinternational.org website. It’ll help you better understand what we’re talking about.

But right now, imagine you’re an engineer going to fix a complex piece of equipment that you’ve never worked on before. Now, think of putting on a pair of special glasses. You can see that piece of equipment through the lenses, just as you would any other glasses, but as well, you can see diagrams, text and video clips projected into a corner of your vision, and hear instructions from a colleague or instructor  - who may be thousands of miles away.

When one thinks of the cost and the huge amount of time spent not just travelling, but negotiating backstage access to sites, it’s easy to understand the advantages of being able to kit out one of the site crew with an AR headset and direct them remotely. It could achieve better results, more quickly and at much lower cost.

Even if you don’t relate to engineering, this conversation with Patrick is illuminating. There must be so many practical applications of Augmented Reality waiting to be developed.

For more details on UtilityAR, check our website https://www.growinternational.org/