Daqri Smart Helmet , combining safety and augmented reality for industrial use

Augmented reality is the rage these days, with Pokemon-Go being the most talked about application that uses augmented reality to enhance user experience. However, an American company called Daqri has designed a hard-hat type smart helmet that could change the way workers and engineers at construction sites and industrial environments go about their work.

The helmet comes with an anti-reflective, scratch-resistant safety visor, but hiding inside is some serious tech. It includes a 13 megapixel high-definition camera, 2D target recognition and tracking as well as object/colour recognition and a 4D HUD – a transparent augmented reality display tweaked for use in the industrial environment.

The helmet is powered by a sixth-generation Intel Core m7 processor and also includes Intel’s RealSense technology to enhance its depth sensing ability, according to information released by the UK Construction Media.

The hardware is utilized using a software program called intellitrack which is able to capture and display information about the user’s surrounding environment.

Brian Mullins, Founder and CEO of Daqri described the Smart Helmet as an entirely new type of human machine interface that will redefine the future of how we work in the industrial world.

Mullins says, his company has “been working in the medium of augmented reality for the past four years, and what we found was, you just can’t solve the most challenging problems with devices that were designed for consumers.”