{"id":71755,"date":"2019-07-26T17:05:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T15:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=71755"},"modified":"2019-07-21T10:36:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T08:36:49","slug":"21-05-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=71755","title":{"rendered":"Smart glasses that \u2018teleport\u2019 experts to the field"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Smart glasses that \u2018teleport\u2019 experts to the field<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Brian Blum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Companies such as BP are using Fieldbit\u2019s technology to bring offsite expertise to help onsite technicians through a pair of smart glasses.<\/strong>
\nOil rigs are one of the main customers for Fieldbit. Illustrative photo via Shutterstock.com<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The 2010 explosion on the oil-drilling rig Deepwater Horizon was a wake-up call for BP, the British multinational oil and gas company that operated it at the time. The resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused major ecological damage and cost BP $20 billion in damages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disaster can often spur the development of better practices. That was BP\u2019s goal when it began searching for ways to improve ongoing and emergency maintenance at its oil wells.<\/span><\/p>\n

BP discovered that there simply aren\u2019t enough field technicians with the experience to tackle big problems like the one that occurred on Deepwater Horizon. Since it\u2019s not yet possible to teleport experts to the scene, \u201csmart glasses\u201d have emerged as the next best thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Glasses running augmented reality software can transmit what a field technician is seeing to an offsite expert, who can then \u201cdraw\u201d on the image to guide the technician to fix the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company behind this technology now implemented across 13,000 BP wells is Israeli startup Fieldbit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fieldbit\u2019s flagship product, Hero, is a collaboration platform that enables technicians and experts to communicate across great distances.<\/span><\/p>\n

A second product, Fieldbit Knowledge, records their interactions and categorizes them for quick retrieval from a cloud-based database.<\/span><\/p>\n

BP isn\u2019t Fieldbit\u2019s only client, nor are oil wells its sole focus. But it was an opportune industry for Fieldbit to get started.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBP approached us almost two years ago with a pressing need,\u201d Evyatar Meiron, Fieldbit\u2019s CEO, tells ISRAEL21c.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe augmented reality keeps the annotations in place. It can show where to cut a wire or exactly where to open a valve, things that are very difficult to explain in words.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The growth of fracking was largely driving the change. The establishment of more small wells, mostly in the United States, put pressure on technicians to cover more ground without increasing costs to BP.<\/span><\/p>\n

BP\u2019s interest is clear in its 2018 annual report: \u201cNew technologies are helping us build intelligent operations throughout our businesses. We are using augmented reality (AR) devices such as \u2018smart glasses\u2019 across BPX Energy \u2026 we are now using the mobile platform to troubleshoot equipment, conduct safety verifications and deliver remote training.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Augmented reality instructions \u201cstick\u201d to real objects. Screenshot courtesy of Fieldbit<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Meiron describes to ISRAEL21c how Fieldbit\u2019s system works.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe allow the field technician to send digital information to an expert. The expert has an editor and can take a snapshot of the video. He can draw on the snapshot and send it back to the technician, who receives this annotation projected on his device. The technician can turn his head and look in different directions. The augmented reality keeps the annotations in place. It can show where to cut a wire or exactly where to open a valve, things that are very difficult to explain in words.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While glasses are the ideal, augmented reality can work on smartphones and tablets as well. That\u2019s how Pokemon Go works. The Pokemons in the game can only be seen when you point the device at a location in the real world where the virtual creatures are \u201chiding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

AR will eventually become ubiquitous for consumer applications, but for now \u201cthe value is much higher when we\u2019re talking about business-to-business applications, with machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,\u201d Meiron explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fieldbit was founded in 2014 and its two-way collaboration Hero system was operational a year later. Fieldbit Knowledge was released this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s newest product, Fieldbit Cosmic, allows corporate customers to connect Fieldbit with their own enterprise field-service management software. Meiron says the market for dispatching and scheduling software that tells a technician where to go and what to take to fix a malfunction is worth some $3 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo send an expert to a site can cost a few hundred dollars per visit,\u201d Meiron points out. \u201cA technician might make four to five visits a day. For an organization with 100 technicians, that can add up to millions of dollars in potential savings, not including the down time of the machine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, skilled field technicians are becoming harder to find. The old guard of technicians (mostly Baby Boomers) are starting to retire. \u201cMillennials in many cases don\u2019t want these jobs, working outside with customers. They want to sit in an office,\u201d Meiron says, adding that 30 percent of field-service experts are expected to retire within the next three years. \u201cOrganizations risk losing large amounts of knowledge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Meiron suggesting that with Fieldbit\u2019s AR glasses anyone can fix an oil rig? \u201cNot at all,\u201d he replies. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be a layman, of course. But you also don\u2019t need to understand all the mechanics of the machine. You just need to be the hands and eyes of the experts or use the knowledge on our device.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Utilities, medical imaging, printing<\/span><\/p>\n

Fieldbit CEO Evyatar Meiron. Photo: courtesy<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

European energy business ENGIE named Fieldbit its startup of the year in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Fieldbit has made the biggest splash in the world of oil and gas, its first pilot client was a utility \u2014 Mekorot, Israel\u2019s national water carrier. Fieldbit assisted technicians in fixing burst pipes and running regular monitoring tests for water quality.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company also is in talks with industries such as printing and medical imaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still small, less than 100 people, so we are not yet able to make cold calls to look for customers,\u201d says Meiron, adding that 90% of sales have come from unsolicited inquiries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fieldbit has raised $7 million to date, including $1 million from the Israel Innovation Authority and the rest from the Russian Skolkovo Ventures fund, Eldad Weiss (the company\u2019s chairman) and the Israeli family fund Atooro. A second round is now in progress.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fieldbit is Meiron\u2019s third startup. He prefers \u201cconservative markets that have legacy solutions where new technology can help.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the impetus for his creation of the Hebrew-language Hashavshevet program used by most Israeli accounting firms; the software company Wizcon, which made software to control factory production floors from a web browser; and PC Soft International, which also specialized in Internet-based automatic control software.<\/span><\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one common denominator underlining all of Meiron\u2019s companies, it\u2019s that \u201cmore first-time fixes and less downtime [result in] happier customers,\u201d Meiron says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those customers may someday include you and me: Armed with AR-powered glasses, we may be able to make our own expert-guided household repairs.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Smart glasses that \u2018teleport\u2019 experts to the field Brian Blum Companies such as BP are using Fieldbit\u2019s technology to bring offsite expertise to help onsite technicians through a pair of smart glasses. Oil rigs are one of the main customers for Fieldbit. Illustrative photo via Shutterstock.com The 2010 explosion on the oil-drilling rig Deepwater Horizon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71755"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71917,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71755\/revisions\/71917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}