Mixed Reality Applications in Industry 4.0

In the future, digitalization will become a part of the entire value chain. Thus, FroXx is helping players in the industry 4.0 to shape the Digital Transformation in the working place.

FroXx makes sure that people, machines, technology, and processes are a symbiotic unity to attend the digitalized workflow of the requirements of the industry 4.0

Rodrigo Beyer Fernandez, CEO and Founder of FroXx Industries, talks about Mixed Reality’s applications for the industry 4.0.

What can you tell us about Mixed Reality Rodrigo?

Remember when you saw people around the corner looking for Pokemons? One could say these guys were sort of “crazy” right? Actually, Pokemon brought for the first time to the market Augmented Reality: they literally augmented reality by extending it. Mixed Reality (MR) is slightly different as it gives a full immersive experience where both the real-world and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time, which is a little bit more suitable for industries. We know now we can augment reality, but we can use this given reality and take it to a next level: that is what we call the immersive experience. It will bring to us new horizons of usability especially in the industry 4.0, which is not only a trend but also a unique way of use case that we can apply in this industry.

Can you tell us about its concrete applicability?

We can have applicability in different sectors but especially in industries where you have manpower, intelligence and analytics needed. You can combine that altogether throughout those devices powered by applications at the edge: at the edge of network and at the edge of infrastructure. This is what we call the empowered edge.

Can you please give us a few examples of the usability of MR?

In Mixed Reality there are many! The question here is how we can use Mixed Reality to help us achieve our targets. For example, getting more efficient, having processes in place that will help you optimize the way you do your own work, but also sustainability: how can I reduce my carbon footprint and generate less emissions? It is a very important topic, especially since the pandemic has shown us how we need to think differently. The main part in the workforce is flexible enough to get adapted to different circumstances.

What industries are you currently targeting?

At FroXx, we do target two segments of the industry 4.0. The first segment is around what we call the Towers companies. Just think about the rollout of 5G: there will be a need for installing many new antennas, right? We can help them with Mixed Reality providing intelligence, a process and an associated software. We have the capabilities to get those installations shorter, more efficient, at lower cost while leveraging the workforce which is already available for them. They don’t need to retrain the people and the workforce that have been rolling out when installing the antennas for 3G and 4G. Instead, they can use the capability, the embedded intelligence that they’re going to provide throughout the software and the processing embedded for the rollout.

Promising! What about the second industry you mentioned?

The other segment of the same industry that we’re targeting is the infrastructure industry, more specifically the data centres. One of the given pain point they have is what they call the “extended hands” or “hands and eyes” type of work. That is something done by highly qualified engineers, typically inside the data centres on behalf of their customers, or even their customers’ customers.

Can you illustrate their pain point with an example?

Just imagine this situation: a very big player is sitting in the Silicon Valley and providing instructions towards a data centre in Frankfurt. Today, a group of people is flying to Frankfurt to make sure these instructions and installations are carried out according to the expectations of the central office out of the Silicon Valley. Now with MR, we can short that up by providing an auditable, totally comprehensive and efficient solution with very low carbon footprint, so these instructions coming throughout the Silicon Valley are going directly to the field operation or to the smart hands inside this given data centre.

Very interesting indeed. So, by targeting tower companies and data centres, you must combine a lot of technologies to achieve your goals, right?

Indeed, and this will be a game changer as there will be a lot of help into this segment of the industry 4.0. It’s all about automation, combined analytics, having AI applied into our favour. In a nutshell, the motto of FroXx and all the R&D we’re working on right now is to “melt” the human being with the hard work of the machines by providing the proper solutions throughout the software, to combine that as a unit.

Contact Information:

Nicolas Lycas, Head of Business Development FroXx, GmbH Potsdam, Germany.

+49 331 98222507

E-Mail: nicolas.lycas@froxx-industries.com

www.froxx-industries.com