PwC's Tech While You Trek: Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality

Imagine peering at your lightbulb through your phone and the light bulb turns on. Seem unrealistic? Listen to this episode of Tech While You Trek to hear Tim Marco of PwC’s Emerging Tech Lab share the work PwC is doing with Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) and how they’re making that very idea a reality.  

Transcript

PwC's Tech While You Trek:  Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality Transcript

00;00;07;23 [ADAM]: Welcome to another Tech While You Trek. I am your

                    host Adam today we're going to be talking about augmented reality and

                    virtual reality.

                    AR and VR and we are talking today with the one and only Tim Marco.

                    How are you today sir?

                    [TIM]: I'm doing great.

                    Thanks for having me Adam.

                    [ADAM]: So tell me a little bit about yourself what brought you to the

                    firm? How long have you been here?

00;00;27;13 [TIM]: I've been here for about three and a half years.

                    And I have a different background than I think the typical consultant. In

                    my career I started with a few marketing and Internet startups so I

                    was doing a lot of programming a lot of analytics a lot of web analytics

                    that sort of thing.

                    And from there I moved on to an advertising agency and eventually I

                    came into PwC and the experience center and I was working in

                    analytics for the experience center for a while.

                    And then after about a year I transferred over to the emerging technology

                    lab which is part of new services and emerging tech

00;00;59;19 [ADAM]: Virtual reality and augmented reality. Are we talking about two

                    things that are disparate things, are we talking about two related things?

00;01;04;13 [TIM]: Yeah that's a great question.

                    So virtual reality and augmented reality exist on what you can consider to

                    be a continuum or a spectrum.

                    The general idea with virtual reality is that you're existing in an

                    environment that's entirely computer generated.

                    Typically you'll have a head mounted device which is essentially a visor

                    with screens in it and you're going around and everything that you're

                    interacting with is created by a computer.

00;01;27;28 Now augmented reality at the other end of the

                    spectrum takes a view of the world that you can see.

                    So either through your eyes or sometimes through a camera like on a

                    phone or a tablet and it takes that and adds virtual or computer generated

                    images to that world.

00;01;42;11 [ADAM]: So clearly all of ARand VR are device driven.

                    Talk to me a little about what kind of devices these are going to be how

                    people get their hands on them how they wind up in the hands of users.

                    [TIM]: Today I think the most common place that people are going to

                    interact with these are through their phones or mobile devices.

                    There are a lot of applications and frameworks and libraries that exist for

                    creating augmented reality that you can see through your phone's camera.

                    And moving forward into the future

                    I think that eventually we'll get to a point where there will be smart

                    goggles that will be lightweight sort of projection systems that you can

                    just see these things through your own eyes. We’re not really there yet.

                    Some of those devices exist today but they have limitations around they're

                    too heavy or they're tethered to a computer or the field of view that's

                    very small today. When those challenges really get addressed.

                    We'll be able to have devices that you’llwear them on your head.

                    They'll be essentially glasses and eventually they can fulfill both A.R.

                    and VR requirements.

                    [ADAM]: What's the coolest thing you've done with the firm working with

                    A.R. and VR?

00;02;38;15 [TIM]: Right now we're focusing on phone devices for

                    augmented reality.

                    And so what a lot of those do are you're looking through your device

                    holding it up as if you were taking a photo and so you're looking around

                    the world and you can pick up information from things in the world.

                    And so if you have something like smart lights for home automation we

                    have a prototype now where you can take those lights and just by looking

                    at them you can turn them on and off.

                    And so you don't have switches you don't have menus you don't have an

                    interface.

                    The really exciting thing is that with augmented reality the world becomes

00;03;11;26 its own interface.

                    And so that's a lot of the areas that we're looking into and the prototypes

                    that we have.

00;03;16;21 [ADAM]: So I'm going to ask you now to help me separate the

                    hype versus the reality of AR and VR.

00;03;33;07 [TIM]: So that is I think the number one question that we

                    deal with day to day because

                    with all emerging technologies really there's an excitement that comes

                    about just by the existence of those technologies and we get interested in

                    the technology itself sometimes to the detriment of the use cases.

00;03;50;25 And I think it's really fundamentally the same

                    process of designing any solution designing any technology or just design

                    generally which is to separate the hype from the real value.

                    You have to focus on the actual application on the users the clients the

                    companies that are really going to benefit from this new paradigm of

                    interacting with the world.

[ADAM]: Well you have helped me segue beautifully into my next

00;04;22;13 question. So talk to me a little bit about how AR and VR are

                    relevant to the lines of service. Tax, audit, advisory.

00;04;28;22 [TIM]: I think the first wave of this is really going to

                    affect a lot of the work that's happening in advisory.

                    A lot of technology consulting.

                    There's going to be a tremendous amount of interest in the coming years

                    from clients from the most basic what is this technology to much more

                    advanced.

                    How do we implement this for our customers today?

                    So that'll be the first wave.

                    And then I think that the follow on effects will start to affect tax and

                    audit perhaps a little bit more.

                    Anytime that there is something in the real world that our clients are

                    trying to help their users or their employees interact with there's huge

00;05;00;24 huge benefits for this technology.

                    [ADAM]: Can you give me a for instance?

[TIM]: For our clients who are working in aerospace

                    industries those are very complicated machines and it's very difficult

                    to train employees on all of the procedures that they need to do to repair

                    that plane and all the parts that need to be checked.

00;05;18;07 So what you can do with augmented reality is you can

                    have devices that those employees would wear on the ground, typically

                    head mounted devices like smart glasses.

                    And as they're going through the plane every part that needs to be checked

                    they can go through and check it and make sure that it's been checked.

                    They can have a record and an audit trail that all the maintenance has been

                    performed.

                    And when a new or novel challenge comes up, there's a part that employee

                    is not familiar with that they have to repair.

                    They can see in their field of view in three dimensions exactly what they

00;05;49;01 need to do and exactly what the procedure is to solve that problem.

00;05;52;14 [ADAM]: Do you have a for instance of a way the firm is using

                    VR technology.

00;05;56;07 [TIM]: company out of the U.K.

                    focuses on what they call multi-

                    user virtual reality experiences.

                    And essentially what that means is you can have multiple people in

                    different locations across the globe connected through the Internet

                    working together in a virtual environment.

                    Now this is really valuable for training applications and training in

                    scenarios that would either be expensive or dangerous or just otherwise

                    not practical to walk people through a scenario.

                    So for an example if you have an oil refinery or a rig or a mining site

00;06;31;06 where it be really expensive and dangerous to teach workers how to go

                    through a process of emergency management you can do this in virtual

                    reality together and avoid the costs and danger of dealing with this

                    situation.

00;06;44;27 [ADAM]: And is that the kind of thing you think that's going

                    to apply to audit, going to apply to tax in terms of what they might use it

                    for. Would there be a virtual reality application for those lines of

                    service?

00;06;52;28 [TIM]: The more interesting concept is the extent to which

                    this will replace desktop computers and the way that this will replace

                    their day to day interaction with information. If they're at the office if

                    they're at home wherever they are in the world they'll just be able to pull

                    that information up without needing a laptop, without needing a tablet.

00;07;10;14 [ADAM]: I know you said this is a new technology emerging

                    technology. Obviously in the fledgling stage people are going to make lots

                    of mistakes.

                    I want to know when is the time that you fell flat on your face when trying

                    to implement ?

00;07;25;28 [TIM]: I think that a lot of the work that I do and the

                    work that we do in the emerging technology lab could be characterized as

                    constantly failing.

                    What we're doing is we're failing until we’re not.

                    I've heard a lot of quotes about art and writing that they're very

                    frustrating because everything is a terrible mess until the moment that

                    it's not.

                    And so a lot of what we're doing is just this process of oh we want to

                    place this virtual object relative to this real world object let's try it

                    and it doesn't work.

00;07;52;28 And so we try again and it doesn't work.

                    And we try again and it doesn't work.

                    And then eventually you tweak things and then it does work.

                    So I would just say that every step of the process is failure until it's

                    not.

00;08;02;29 [ADAM]: That is a fantastic answer.

00;08;04;09 All right so then tell me one thing you think the

                    listeners ought to know about AR and VR moving forward.

[TIM]: Both AR and VR are going

                    to change the world and if you think that they're going to change the world

                    soon you're wrong and if you think that it's very far away you're also

                    wrong. There's so much potential with this technology but there's also a lot

                    of things that need to improve there's display technology needs to improve

                    computing power, batteries need to improve before we see the full impact

                    of this.

                    So I would really argue pay attention to these things, these are very

00;08;34;25 important but also be patient that it will take a little bit of time before

                    our world is totally fundamentally changed.

00;08;48;29 [ADAM]: All right so Tim I like to ask all of my guests four

                    rapid fire questions.

                    Before I let them go.

                Are you prepared.?

                    Are you very much ready for this?

                    [TIM]: I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

                    [ADAM]: Well that's OK.

                    So here we go.

                    First what is your bold prediction for the year 2040 as it relates to AR

                    and VR?

00;09;04;05 [TIM]: It will disappear.

                    You won't even be aware that it's a technology. It'll fade entirely into

                    the background and just be part of your day to day life.

00;09;10;17 [ADAM]: You think that's a bold prediction.

                    That sounds like a well considered and educated prediction.

                    Give me a bold prediction for 2014.

00;09;17;05 [TIM]: Astronauts on Mars will use augmented and virtual

                    reality to communicate with home so much that they'll forget that they're

                    on Mars.

00;09;25;12 [ADAM]: Now we're talking.

                    All right the second question. What is your favorite source for new

                    technology information?

00;09;30;20 [TIM]: There’s a Web site called Hacker News and it's sort

                    of an aggregator of all things technology and all things Silicon Valley.

                    And I find it's very, very useful not just for AR and V.R. but just for

                    keeping a pulse on technology generally.

00;09;42;29 [ADAM]: What makes someone a lifelong learner?

[TIM]: Curiosity.

                    [ADAM]: What is your favorite technology book?

                    I need your fiction answer and your nonfiction answer.

                    [TIM]: On the fiction side, I would definitely say the Foundation series.

                    The general idea of that entire series is that someone has figured out an

                    algorithm that predicts the entire history of the future which is an

                    interesting and somewhat terrifying idea to me and on the nonfiction side I

                    would say the book Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

                    It's an old book but I think it does a great job of understanding why we

00;10;13;26 create tools how we create tools and how the tools we create change us.

                    [ADAM]: So Tim this is really fascinating stuff. If people want to find out

                    more, how can they get at you

                    or folks who can talk to them about what's going on at the firm with

                    A.R. and VR?

00;10;27;02 [TIM]: our primary hub for all that information is

                    on Spark. Just look up new services and emerging technology.

                    We have a lot of updated information we have decks, we’ll have videos

                that sort of demo what we're doing and explain more about Augmented

                    Reality and Virtual Reality.

00;10;40;22 [ADAM]: Tim thank you so much for your time, man.

                    [TIM]: Great. Thank you.

                    [ADAM]: This has been Tech While You Trek talking to Tim Marco

                    about AR and VR. I've been your host Adam and we'll see you next time.

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