Jens Meier: The possibilities for AR are many and varied. Along the entire life cycle of buildings, bridges, etc., for example, we find a large number of application examples in which AR can offer enormous potential.
Thanks to AR, every building can be viewed in real size during the planning stage, before the first sod is turned. This means you can walk through the rooms, corridors, doors and parks as if they had actually been built, without having to touch a single brick.
But there can also be huge benefits during construction. AR can significantly simplify the inspection of construction sites by virtually reproducing the planned construction progress and, for example, making incorrectly placed walls directly recognizable. You don’t even need a tape measure. Everything is visualized within the AR as planned. If there are any deviations on the construction site, this can be recognized directly and in the shortest possible time, without much effort.
Maintenance can also be supported. AR can not only be used to document cracks, for example, but also to display past damage. Let’s assume a crack was discovered and documented in a wall a year ago. Thanks to AR, we can now view the crack and check whether the size, width or depth has changed. On top of that we find use cases for autonomous robots like SPOT, which can carry out (visual) inspections on its own. The results of these inspections can be reproduced and visualized by AR, so specialists can evaluate and react on the results. But I guess that’s beyond the scope of the question.