Markerless Tracking & Tango Support Come to Scope AR's Remote Assistance Solution Remote AR

Today in Santa Clara, California, at the Augmented World Expo, Scope AR revealed a major new update that will add markerless tracking for their remote assistance application, Remote AR, on standard devices.

This update, powered by real-time image tracking solution Wikitude, presents a major step forward in the current line of image-based tracking solutions.

Remote AR allows remote support experts to follow along in real time with the camera view of a mobile device or smartglasses used by a field technician or customer. The remote expert is able to annotate a field user's view with whiteboard drawings or other instructional content.

Now, with markerless tracking, field users can point their devices at equipment and Remote AR will recognize the object and lock annotations on target.

With the spatial mapping solutions of Microsoft HoloLens and the Occipital Structure Sensor, anchoring data to a specific place is becoming more and more baseline functionality for these types of technology. That said, most of these types of features require special sensors to accomplish markerless tracking.

This update is designed to work with the standard RGB cameras in most current-generation smartphones, tablets, and in some wearable devices, casting a wide net in terms of potential use-cases. The update will help bring these types of technologies to consumers as well as enterprise and industrial solutions.

Scope AR CEO and co-founder Scott Montgomerie took some time out of his day to tell me about these features and walk me through a demo of the new product.

Considering the work is being done on technology most people already have access to, the fact that Scott and I could walk to a random spot on the AWE lot, and he was able to annotate a few elements around us on one device, with near-flawless tracking, was impactful enough.

Then Remote AR did what it is designed to do — show the view and annotations on a separate device. The whole display was impressive and inspires a quick avalanche of potential use-cases.

Markerless tracking is one of the major hurdles AR has been facing before becoming more accessible for enterprise and industrial use. We're excited to collaborate with the leading innovator for markerless tracking, Wikitude, to bring this to life for our users. With Remote AR's latest updates, users can have the benefits of markerless tracking on standard devices, making it even easier to implement AR for their specific uses.

— Scott Montgomerie (via press release)

Another major addition in the new update brings along support for Google's Tango sensor, adding real-world mapping capabilities that bridge the gap between the Structure Sensor, or the sensor array of the HoloLens, and the ability to anchor annotations in the world.