Written by Special Guest Blogger Kelly Baig, HP Education Services

HP has been running active pilot testing of its MyRoom/VRG solution. VRG stands for “Visual Remote Guidance,” which is a fancy name for the integration HP offers with wearable tech devices, including Google Glass, Vuzix M100, and ChipSip to name a few.

The MyRoom/VRG solution was the result of active collaboration and development by the HP MyRoom software team and the HP Graphics printer division. What does the solution provide? Hands-free, remote support assistance – backed by secure, real-time communication through the HP Helion Cloud. In summary, rather than sending a printer expert to the customer on-site, the customer can use smart glasses to show the expert the problem and receive immediate help and assistance.

The solution is depicted here, in this illustration:

Since the introduction of this technology, the HP MyRoom team has received countless inquiries and questions from all types of organizations. These organizations include teams at manufacturing and utilities companies, telcos and government agencies, and automotive, technology, and healthcare companies – and this market is just getting started.

In this blog article, I wanted to share some of the highlights along with the lessons that are being learned in a few of the active pilots HP is running with the MyRoom/VRG solution.

For most of the pilots, what has emerged is a clear early “winner” in terms of the use cases that are being explored: most teams are interested in some form of remote support, training and/or remediation very similar to what our HP Graphics team implemented last year.

Here’s a good example that is representative of a few of the pilots:

• The manufacturer wants hands-free support for machine techs attempting new types of repairs, such as fixing recalled and/or faulty components
• They described a scenario, for instance, in which a recall might require the use of a new type of tool the techs have not previously seen
• They were particularly concerned about techs working in small dealerships or environments in which local support is likely to be lacking or non-existent
• The solution: Using MyRoom/VRG with remote smart glasses – showing the steps in the repair on the device, then enabling the tech to see a short training video if they need more help on the step, and then finally enabling the tech to obtain live support through MyRoom/VRG from the SME at the manufacturing site

As you’d expect, video quality for this type of application is critical. Here are some comments from the pilot team involved in the testing:

“Over the last 6 weeks the video quality on the MyRoom VRG apk installed on the Android devices has significantly improved. One of the Field Engineers has been very impressed with progress to date.”

Some of our pilots have augmented the use of smart glasses with streaming video to a tablet or other mobile device; however, many of the smart glass vendors are working with us to add video stabilization directly to the hardware; and we expect this will harden the solution further than what our software has been able to do on its own.

By the way, in some environments we have found that safety smart glasses are required. And, yes, it’s available.

HP is an official sponsor of the Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit. The HP MyRoom/Visual Remote Guidance is the first and only collaboration solution that enables smart glass wearable technology to be applied to solving complex problems for diverse business functions, and across a wide variety of industries.