Emails, telephone conversations, video conferences, teamwork in the cloud. Despite these technical aids, more than EUR 50bn is spent on business trips every year in Germany alone. Data goggles now have the potential to make huge savings – both in terms of time and money.

Recent decades have seen the launch of fantastic new possibilities for communicating directly with colleagues across the continents and in real time. And yet, the number of business trips is higher than ever. Oculavis, based in Aachen, Germany, has just created a new audio-visual dialogue option using a conventional set of data goggles and a special software package. This new product has the potential to slash travel expenses for service technicians by 20 to 30 percent whilst drastically reducing machine downtimes.

See what the customer sees: Textile machines

Also designed for tablets and smart phones, the technology is suitable for carrying out remote maintenance on textile machinery. The start-up behind the technology was awarded the Founders Prize in 2018 (Gründerpreis 2018) and has adopted the slogan: “Bringing expert knowledge to the user”. At the ADD International Textile Conference in Aachen at the end of 2018, co-founder Martin Plutz, 34, introduced the participants to this augmented reality feature, giving them an insight into the wonderful opportunities offered by Industry 4.0. Donning the goggles, the fictional maintenance engineer is presented with a fictional machine in China.

“The white dot in the middle of the field of vision is the mouse,” Plutz explains. “It can be controlled either with the eyes or with gestures.” People wearing the data goggles for the first time tend to opt for hand commands.

Expert advice helps to reduce downtimes and travel costs

The service platform Oculavis Share, designed for the collaborative management and documentation of service, maintenance and repair processes, is the first major success of the spin-off which emanated from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and RWTH Aachen University and now employs 25 staff from ten countries.

The remote technology makes it possible for technicians to provide effective self-help on-site. They see what the customer sees and can use the smart glasses to add an additional display featuring further information to solve the problem. ABB, Audi and Deutsche Bahn are among the first companies to use this technology.

The team of co-founders want to use their innovation, which has so far required no outside investment, to strengthen Germany as a manufacturing and business location. For example, customers can generate additional sales by using digital service packages.

To see the video about Oculavis click here.

Hans-Werner Oertel