Google Glass in the Manufacturing & Process Industries

Google Glass is soon to be hitting the consumer market and Process Industry Forum has decided to take a look at the capabilities and functionalities  that could potentially revolutionise the Manufacturing & Process industries.

What is Google Glass?

Google Glass is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) that is currently being developed by Google X; a secret facility run by Google just outside of the ‘Googleplex’ in Mountain View, California. Google X has previously worked on projects such as the driverless car.

Why Write an Article on Google Glass?

Google Glass ‘caught my colleague’s eye’ (excuse the pun) this week after the technology was spotted on the red carpet. This has subsequently led to frequent discussions in the office around the new innovation. As these questions were aimed at me I decided to do a little research...

Google Glass in Industry

The more I think about it, the more opportunities I see for it to be implemented into the working lives of an engineer. ITAMCO has also seen this and is trying to bring the technologically into the manufacturing industry. Google Glass is open source which means the software is open to developers to do what they wish. In this case, they are using MTConnect which is a manufacturing industry standard established for the organised retrieval of process information from numerically controlled machine tools. The free application developed for Google Glass by ITAMCO can be used to monitor machine tools.

Google Glass has all the features MTConnect needs in order to run efficiently and without any effort; a camera, microphone, touchpad, email and internet connection. When the two are in sync, the application can retrieve information from compatible equipment and display things such as power status, emergency stop, alarm/ messages, block, controller mode, line, program, execution, path feed-rate, spindle, axis positions, spindle overrides feed-rate overrides, machine location, part location and current part status.It is also possible to stream the internals of the machine to the user if a camera is in position.

Finally, because of the email and internet capabilities of Google Glass, it is then possible to share this data in within seconds. Take a look at the video below to see Google Glass using MTConnect in action.

Do you think Google Glass has the potential to become a game changer for the industry? We are very excited to see what the future holds for Google Glass and hope other developers utilise the technology in order to push things forward for engineers. We'd love to hear what you've got to say in the comments section.