The Surprising Reason Oil Companies Love Google Glass
Global energy giant Schlumberger is equipping oil field workers with Google Glass to handle workflow in places tablets can’t go. But the real innovation is the worker data Glass can collect.
Oilfield workers have dangerous, messy, and exceedingly complicated jobs. And energy multinational Schlumberger is trying out something that might make their jobs easier: Google Glass.
Glass has had a mixed reception amongst consumers, but may be more practical for workers who need access to data, schematics, maps, or video capture while using both hands for doing actual work. As part of a new pilot project, Schlumberger is testing out Glass as part of a workflow management tool for oilfield workers. The workers will wear Glass to guide them through their daily tasks.
But most importantly, Glass will also give real-time performance metrics back to management. Schlumberger is using Glass headsets with software created by San Francisco-based Wearable Intelligence, which exited stealth mode this past April and also creates a Google Glass platform for health care clients including in-hospital use at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center. Chase Feiger, Wearable Intelligence’s founder, told Co.Labs that the Schlumberger trial project was designed to show Glass’ utility in industrial settings.
Many of the checklists that oilfield employees go through for workflow take hours to complete. At this point in time, pen and paper or small tablets are commonly used because workers are frequently in dirty, dangerous environments where they need their hands to be free.
Because Wearable Intelligence is creating Glass solutions for sensitive areas such as the oil industry and emergency rooms, they use security as a selling point for potential customers.
The company says customers are given customized versions of Glass that disable consumer-facing apps which are believed to send information to Google’s servers. The idea is to have all information stay within the enterprise and not going back to Google’s servers. In addition, a custom dictionary is believed to be added to the platform to help Glass’s voice recognition platform understand energy industry-specific firms (though Wearable Intelligence refused to confirm this). As Feiger put it, “You just can’t expect Glass to work out-of-box in an oil field.”
Although exact details of the trial have not been disclosed, Schlumberger is believed to be testing Google Glass at several locations in the United States and overseas.
