DAQRI reveals its new industrial AR helmet, with Irish help

6 Jan 2016

DAQRI, one of the largest augmented reality (AR) companies in the world, which also has operations in Ireland, has revealed its latest AR helmet geared for industrial industries, and it’s due for release very soon.

Announcing it at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, the CEO of DAQRI, Brian Mullins, said that the new DAQRI Smart Helmet has five times the processing power of previous iterations, as well as improved depth-sensing capability, to make it one of the best of its type on the market.

The company opened its European headquarters here in June 2015, which preceeded the company’s co-founder Gaia Dempsey taking to the stage of Inspirefest in Dublin to talk about how its smart helmet will play into a future heavily reliant on the internet of things (IoT).

Back in Las Vegas, however, Mullins and DAQRI revealed some of the technology that has gone into the new-and-improved smart helmet, including a sixth-gen Intel Core m7 processor as well as Intel’s RealSense technology.

Q1 2016 release

The DAQRI Smart Helmet, according to the company, is geared particularly towards those working in hands-on, engineering industries, including aerospace, construction and fuel processing, which is why it includes industrial-grade, 360º sensor array with HD video and thermal vision sensors for predictive maintenance and enhanced worker safety.

Live equipment data will also be streamed to the headset for the wearer to become aware of during their work, as well as integration with DAQRI’s 4D Studio augmented work instruction platform.

The headset has been given a release date, like many of the consumer virtual reality (VR) headsets, of Q1 2016.

“We have already demonstrated how the use of augmented reality hardware and software solves problems for our partners and, with the addition of Intel technology, we are supercharging DAQRI Smart Helmet so that we can continue to drive the future of work,” Mullins said on stage at CES 2016.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com