Brenda Marie Rivers
Lockheed Martin has partnered with Microsoft to use the latter’s mixed-reality collaboration tool to help engineers visualize procedures while assembling the Orion spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission to lunar orbit.
Lockheed used Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 headsets that provided holographic instructions during the installation of crew seats and modification of systems aboard the Orion capsule, Microsoft said in a blog post published Tuesday.
HoloLens launched this week and operates as a modified version of the company’s HoloLens “smartglasses†that utilize cloud and artificial intelligence features for immersive collaboration.
Shelley Peterson, principal investigator for augmented and mixed reality at Lockheed, said the updated device helped mitigate reliance on computer screens and paper drawings during Orion’s assembly phase.
Alex Kipman, a technical fellow at Microsoft, noted that HoloLens 2 also enabled engineers to reduce time spent processing and reviewing data “by about 90 percent.â€
The device's launch comes after Microsoft collaborated with the U.K. health department and Mercedes-Benz's U.S. arm to use HoloLens 2 for their respective operations.
HoloLens 2 is currently available for customers in selected countries across Europe and Asia.
