The wearable come into the assembly line in the Ford factory in Valencia

Wearable and virtual reality are two themes that you will find it more forcefully space in the chronicles of this 2016. In both cases, much of the attention of the public is catalyzed to the consumer, but a closer look will be the professional fallout to give great impetus to both the themes.

 Do the virtual tour of a house, the interior of a car or analyze inside a CAD project will be done in applications where virtual reality will find a market outlet, and also with regard to the technologies wearable speech might look like . The first thought is certainly the smart glass, which in certain cases, such as in the field of maintenance, already find it very interesting projects, but Ford, pioneer of the assembly line, showed how even the wearable 'wrist' can become a tool to improve business performance.

"We explored various solutions to improve the production processes in our facilities to make more and more efficient operations," said Linda Cash, Vice President Manufacturing, Ford of Europe. "The ability to rely on the screen of a mobile device to integrate the quality control processes helps to increase levels of precision and efficiency, while reducing stress and physical effort".

Ford has developed an app that enables quality assurance engineers to carry out specific checks in a few moments on the cars on the assembly line, stopping the production line if necessary, while simultaneously improving both accuracy and the efficiency of controls, as it emerged by trial that the Blue Oval's house brought forward in its Valencia factory. The development of the solution is instead taken place in the new laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan, dedicated exclusively to the study of the potential of 'wearable device applications'. At the moment the system is not to donning a fitness band, as it is crucial to have a large display to interact: the app is implemented in a wearable device on the wrist, based on a Samsung smartphone. Its advantage is, however, to overcome the need to use a PC and that of print materials. In the calculations of Ford this saves technicians over a kilometer a day of walking routes, while reducing paper consumption.

When we have solutions that will project directly to the skin (or sleeve) or next-generation smart glass will find new ways to interact, but at the moment it is certainly interesting to see how this technology is ready to go into the level of the chains of production lines automotive assembly.