Delivering information into the workforce more efficiently

Mobile devices and processing power have made traditional modes of training – rote memorization, classroom sessions, study guides – less appealing and less effective than AR-driven, on-the-job training. With a pair of AR glasses, a trainee can interactively learn through visualization whatever would appear in a printed manual, and experience it real time. Examples includes how to open a machine, where to hold a tool, what to avoid, how to troubleshoot error codes and how to test after reassembly.

With WorkLink, Scope AR addresses two main approaches to enterprise training. The first is on-device training, in which trainees wearing AR glasses work on a piece of real-world equipment on a surface or workbench right in front of them. WorkLink overlays 3D models of virtual parts on the equipment so that trainees follow, step by step, how to perform a given task (such as disassembly, removal or repair). The second approach is virtual training, in which trainees use AR glasses to see and interact with a digital model of the equipment, displayed in virtual space. In addition to the advantages for service and maintenance use cases, the virtual approach is valuable in sales training. Companies can emphasize and conduct in-depth training for sales teams on a digital representation of expensive, fragile or inaccessible equipment. In all approaches, the trainees see animations, text, arrows, images and other use-case relevant indicators to guide them. The training content appears in the AR glasses as if the equipment was annotated in mid-air.

Unifying device adoption with Snapdragon Spaces

“Devices are the biggest barrier to entry in AR,” says Scott Montgomerie, founder and CEO of Scope AR. “We’ve been at this for more than ten years, and we’re always looking for good hardware and a good user experience. Snapdragon Spaces allows us to write to a single SDK that unifies all the APIs and provides everything we need for a robust pair of AR glasses. For us that’s really exciting.”
The user experience on the device is where most of the work is visible. Montgomerie says that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Below the water are elements like data management, content authoring, revision management, scalability, encryption and user management. Snapdragon Spaces makes it easier to enable these critical enterprise grade standards. “Once we were convinced to go with Snapdragon Spaces, the effort required to port the application was pretty light,” says Montgomerie. “We had to upgrade Unity for compliance with OpenXR and AR Foundation. But compared to the amount of work we’d previously put in to support and maintain new hardware, it was very pleasant. And the fact that we already supported standards like Mixed Reality Toolkit meant it was fairly easy to port.”

How enterprise AR is evolving

WorkLink incorporates most of the features in the Snapdragon Spaces Extended Reality SDK, with particular emphasis on these for enterprise technology training:

• Plane Detection When users work with a virtual model of a piece of equipment, they want it resting on a surface, not floating in mid-air so the feature helps anchor the content on a physical surface.
• Dual Render Fusion WorkLink takes advantage of the processing power in a tethered mobile device. That makes for deeper interaction and a better training experience in the virtual space.
• Hand Tracking Helps users interact with the instructions or virtual machine parts, using natural gestures.
• Positional Tracking WorkLink tracks the user’s position so it can render training content in the scene relative to user location, head position, and orientation.



Scope AR believes that Snapdragon Spaces gives hardware manufacturers the chance to focus on what they’re good at: building innovative, differentiated hardware and new choices for AR glasses. And, Qualcomm’s platform will allow manufacturers to do that without imposing more engineering overhead on the AR development community. Montgomerie sees enterprise AR evolving to span three main use cases: field service, manufacturing and learning. Each has its own ideal device parameters like size, weight, ruggedness, battery life and computing power.

“The mobile devices you’re tethered to keep getting more powerful and more differentiated,” says Montgomerie. “We find that customers value the ability to buy the glasses once and continuously upgrade the phone. That’s a big opportunity for us to write to the Snapdragon Spaces SDK and have many different options that cater to different use cases and hardware.”

AR experience highlights:

• Enterprise training, field service and manufacturing. Scope AR delivers knowledge to enterprises through augmented reality.
• On-device and virtual training. The WorkLink content development platform is designed to display instructions through indicators like animations, text, arrows and images on real-world machines and in virtual spaces.
• New, more engaging model of enterprise training. Augmented reality supports Scope AR’s vision of better, faster training to hundreds or thousands of users, with better engagement and knowledge retention.

“Snapdragon Spaces offers a uniform API. When we build on it, a potentially large range of AR devices will run out of the box. The platform removes a huge burden of adoption and ongoing maintenance from our engineering teams. In addition, Snapdragon Spaces includes many pre-made widgets and features that we’d otherwise have had to code ourselves.”

– Scott Montgomerie, Founder and CEO of Scope AR