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As part of its reinvention, Konica Minolta has set up a European Labs network to experiment with new concepts in workplace practice, and examples of the Labs' experimentation were also on show at Spotlight Live. One of the things they have been developing was the Google Glass-like Augmented Reality heads-up display system shown below.
One eye can see a display showing a menu interface, whilst you wear a glove with a built-in barcode scanner.
Instructions are fed in through the display, telling you to pick up various components, and how many. You scan the barcodes beneath each bin to show you have followed the instructions and are ready to move onto the next instruction.
After you've picked the parts, you're guided through the various stages of building. Voila! You've built the letter B in Duplo. Presumably, though, in the real world a worker would be constructing some electronics or an aircraft.
There were a number of other prototype products on show at Spotlight Live, and another one that caught our eye was the Workplace Spoke. This cute little pentagonal module is supposed to be a portable communications hub for workers on the road who want to set up a collaborative space anywhere. It combines mobile data with WiFi, so it can act as a portable hotspot.
But it also supposedly will include a few terabytes of local storage that syncs with the cloud, and even a built-in projector. That bit appeared to be working just fine in the demonstration, but the rest is still very much under development and not likely to be launched until 2018.
