According to Kyle Daughtry, digital reality capabilities architect at Exxon-Mobil, there’s a “tsunami of data” on the horizon that’s about to hit the shore.
“One study shows that data has increased by about 4,300 percent between 2016 and 2021,” Daughtry said. “Since then, the amount of data has grown exponentially and will continue to grow.”
Data has become the biggest part of people’s journeys and strategies over the past decade, Daughtry says, and “new ways to interpret and understand that information and data are needed.”
For the industry to effectively move from the Age of Data to the Age of Experience; Daughtry said leaders must better decide what they do with data, how they visualize it and understand it.
Athicha Dhanormchitphong, enterprise 3D architect for ExxonMobil’s digital reality ecosystem, added data to a sample of consumers buying online from Amazon.com.
“Do you look at reviews to make decisions? Those reviews summarize the human experience. They’re written information of that human experience, with supporting images,” he said. “Sometimes, a 3D rendering shows you how the product fits in your home. That’s what the experiential age is all about.”
“We have maintenance records, isometrics drawings, equipment records, risk assessments,” he added. “We’re trying to visualize it to scale, but how do we do that while we’re still stuck in a 2D world?”
Daughtry said the Age of Experience “creates a future where the operator can go out into the field and access all this information in real-time at any time.” Area.
“Or it comes from a device mounted on your head that gives you hands-free access to information,” he said.
Dhanormchitphong shared the “four cornerstones” for accomplishing this digital reality systems transformation.
The first pillar is the democratization of 3D data capture.
“Let’s start hearing from our operators and see exactly what they do,” he said.
The second pillar determines the centralized storage point for that data; And then building autonomous pipelines to get the data.
“There are many ways we deliver that,” Dhanormchitphong said during the recent Industrial XR Global Summit in Houston.
The final pillar is to allow consumption of data anytime, anywhere by determining the patterns of that data.
“Capture, store, deliver and consume is what we call the lifecycle of our 3D assets,” he said. “It’s a novel approach, but it really helps align the corporation.”
Dhanormchitphong emphasized that if 3D is to be this endeavour, it has to be mainstream and it has to be connected.
“There are issues with systems that we can’t get out of, but we need to be interoperable,” Dhanormchitphong said. “I want to be able to separate my data in and out. It needs to be modular and integrated for corporate scale.”
The ultimate goal, Dhanormchitphong says, is augmented reality; It is to extend the life cycle beyond 3D assets in a wide range of formats, including virtual reality and the integration of both.
“We need to build this ecosystem to move data integration into more visible work,” he said.
Daughtry says the transition to the experiential age is already underway, but notes that one of the biggest challenges to that change is in the mindset and attitudes of the workforce.
“Why work in a 2D world or environment that is actually a three-dimensional world?” he asked. “Really, the biggest change for us has been in our heads: how we’ve moved to a more visible workplace and, in doing so, allowed for transformation through business channels.”
