Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd has introduced 5G augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) Smart Glasses at its marine yard in Singapore, the website Offshore reported. The 5G AR/VR Smart Glasses have been developed in collaboration with M1 Ltd. This is also the first time that the maritime industry in the Southeast Asian region is seeing the use of such smart glasses for everyday tasks. Keppel O&M is hoping to enhance the efficiency of its workforce though the use of such hi-tech technological aids that will also lead to optimum usage of the available resources.
As Chris Ong, CEO of Keppel O&M, said, “Keppel O&M is pleased to partner M1 in leveraging digital technologies to enhance yard operations and safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic when safe management measures limited physical inspections and site surveys, we were the first to officially conduct remote inspections for a newbuild vessel with a classification society using Smart Glasses. Today, we are further expanding its use to not only improve the efficiency of delivering projects and enhancing yard operations but also widening our capabilities to provide digital solutions for our customers’ assets.”
The smart glasses come integrated with a camera sensor, microphone, and micro speaker. Besides, the smart glasses are also designed to get online to aid in real time communications and data sharing to allow for a more meaningful collaboration among the management and workers for a better overall production environment. There is a micro projector as well that can project some information, which can be both text or images onto the glasses for the user to see and act accordingly.
Manjot Singh Mann, CEO of M1, said, “Through M1’s robust 5G network, Smart Glasses can provide [a] high-bandwidth immersive AR/VR environment that enables highly detailed representations and real-time information to be relayed to users and control centers. The successful introduction of the Smart Glasses solution at Keppel O&M is a useful test case that can be scaled and replicated to boost operational efficiency and safety across businesses and industries.”
Specifically, the 5G AR/VR Smart Glasses being implemented by Keppel O&M are designed to perform the roles of site inspection, digital twin virtualization remote monitoring, and remote virtual walkthrough.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in the world of technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles as well, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. Motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot and maybe I’ll make a film sometime in the future.