Harvest Technology Group Limited (ASX:HTG) has entered into an agreement with Iristick NV to commence proof of concept trials for integration of the Infinity Nodestream and Wearwolf technology into Iristick’s industrial smart glasses.
Based in Belgium, Iristick is a technology company creating industrial smart safety glasses to support the digital transformation of enterprises. Iristick wearables are ruggedized certified safety glasses with dual cameras, zoom lens, barcode scanner, voice commands, unrestricted field of view, and boasting ‘full-shift’ battery capacity. Iristick enables “hands-free” remote assistance, work instruction guidance and pick-by- vision for frontline and field workers. Unlike competitors, Iristick enterprise wearables leverage the processing power of a smartphone, avoiding risk of radiation to the wearer and significantly reducing the cost of deployment.
Iristick smart glasses enable remote assistance to support deskless workers with real-time feedback and information from a distant expert. Remote assistance is the most dominant use case in various industries; doctors have glasses on during surgical procedures, service teams are equipped with Iristick glasses during maintenance interventions, and Quality Assurance personnel utilise glasses to perform remote Factory Acceptance Tests.
Industrial smart glasses, also known as ‘smart eyewear’, are wearable computer glasses that add information alongside or to what the wearer sees. Unlike immersive virtual reality headsets, smart glasses give users a sense of physical and digital worlds simultaneously, providing a much more natural experience.
Superimposing information onto a field of view is achieved through an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) or a heads-up display (HUD). Modern smart glasses are effectively wearable computers that can run self- contained mobile applications and use both cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity. Uses for smart glasses include video collaboration solutions, complex manufacturing, logistics and warehousing operations, building and construction, as well as telehealth/telemedicine, humanitarian aid and military applications.
“The global pandemic kickstarted the use of remote assistance via smart glasses as a solution to keep enterprise operations running under strict travel bans and contact restrictions. As field workers are sometimes confronted with low or no Wi-Fi connection, this collaboration can overcome that issue and make remote assistance available over low bandwidth, at any possible location, ensuring workers stay connected at any time,” said Johan De Geyter, Iristick ‘dCEO.
This initial agreement will continue development of the integration of the Company’s Infinity Wearwolf application into Iristick smart glasses, embedding them with the Infinity Nodestream video encryption and streaming protocols.
Wearwolf is a software application version of the Infinity Nodestream encoding platform designed to run on wearable and smartphone mobile devices. Wearwolf enables live secure point-to-point video and communications at ultra-low bandwidths and over poor quality or congested networks. Video and audio can be transferred as low as 32 kbps.
By integrating Wearwolf with the Iristick smart glasses, users can communicate directly to a Nodestream decoding device which utilises the next generation encryption Gimli block cypher with a 384-bit permutation – achieving unmatched levels of high security and high performance.
Prototype testing was completed during December 2020 where the Wearwolf application was successfully combined with the Iristick software development kit (SDK) on a smartphone and proved to work with the cameras, microphone and screen on the Iristick smart glasses. Trial communications were successfully made and maintained between Perth, Australia and Brussels, Belgium at 128kbps.
Planned to launch during the first quarter of 2021, the final commercial product will communicate point-to- point with Nodestream mini decoding devices and the soon-to-be released Nodestream downloadable decoder software application, which will run on laptops and desktop computers.
