Insights
Our observations on AR, AI, and industrial inspection — from customer production lines, product deep dives, and our research.
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Jun 8, 2026 · Kosta Shyshkin · 4 min read
Presence, placement, polarity, and markings verified on a standard iPhone for low-volume PTH PCB assembly. No dedicated camera, no images leaving the device.
Jun 6, 2026 · Kosta Shyshkin · 4 min read
Two weeks of production data from our first Microscope pilot: 317,200 dart items counted at one of India's largest plastic injection contract manufacturers, with a median cycle time of 26 seconds.
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Jun 8, 2026
Mobile visual inspection for through-hole PCB assembly — Inventor
Presence, placement, polarity, and markings verified on a standard iPhone for low-volume PTH PCB assembly. No dedicated camera, no images leaving the device.
Kosta · 4 min read
Jun 6, 2026
5× speed improvement on automated counting of finished products
Two weeks of production data from our first Microscope pilot: 317,200 dart items counted at one of India's largest plastic injection contract manufacturers, with a median cycle time of 26 seconds.
Kosta · 4 min read
Apr 23, 2026
Automated Antenna Inventory: Computer Vision Across 8,000 Towers
How we used purpose-trained YOLO models, iterative fine-tuning, and iPhone LIDAR to automate antenna detection and tower passport generation at scale.
Andriy · 6 min read
Apr 22, 2026
Inventor: Implementation Details
How we built Inventor's AI detection pipeline — from OCR on curved metal surfaces to multi-level frame analysis and zone models — for aviation-grade tube and fitting inspection.
Andriy · 6 min read
Apr 7, 2026
Automated visual inspection on a smartphone — Inventor in 2026
How Inventor combines CoreML, iPhone hardware, and synthetic training data into a mobile inspection pipeline that goes from zero to running in hours, not weeks.
Kosta · 4 min read
Apr 7, 2026
Roboscope: AR defect registration for large composite parts in 2026
iPhone AR drifts 1–2% over 20–30 metres — unacceptable on a 100 m blade. How anchor-on-known-features brings Roboscope to 45 mm accuracy at 95% confidence.
Kosta · 3 min read
Dec 1, 2025
Roboscope — designing an AR platform for industrial quality control
Five years on HoloLens, an overnight switch to iPhone, a client breakup, and a 1% drift at the tip of a 100 m blade — the story of how Roboscope took shape on the wind-blade shop floor.
Andriy · 4 min read
Oct 10, 2025
High-mix low-volume inspection: where machine vision falls short
HMLV factories need inspection that reconfigures at production speed. Why fixed machine vision and manual checks both fail, and what a software-first approach closes.
Kosta · 5 min read
Oct 7, 2025
Quality where work happens
Bringing computer-vision inspection to the smartphone in the technician's hand — what AVIS detects, where it fits in the flow of work, and why mobile, software-first quality control aligns with HMLV economics.
Kosta · 7 min read
Oct 6, 2025
Agile quality inspection: automated visual inspection for short-run production
How the AVIS inspection cascade adapts in hours, not weeks — using synthetic training data and real-world validation to make automated visual inspection practical for custom, short-run manufacturing.
Kosta · 4 min read
Oct 4, 2025
The roadmap for inspection: what comes next
As mobile and adaptable inspection systems become standard, the next step is intelligent, multimodal, and integrated solutions — turning quality control from a compliance burden into a driver of speed and competitive advantage.
Kosta · 5 min read
Jan 16, 2025
Navigation and minimap in mixed reality app
Why screen-era navigation patterns mostly break in MR, what to do with sound and modal dialogs, and the moment a building minimap turned into a full-size density map painted on a composite airplane part.
Andriy · 5 min read
Oct 14, 2024
Marking in mixed reality
Three iterations of the Marker UX in Spector — from a free-floating object, to a robot-assistant spawn point, to ray-cast snap-to-surface — and what we learned about limiting degrees of freedom in MR.
Andriy · 2 min read
Sep 20, 2024
Narrowing down the use case
A taxonomy of the many flavours of "reality", what makes MR irreplaceable on the shop floor, and how Spiral landed on non-destructive testing as the use case where the trade-offs actually pencil out.
Andriy · 7 min read
Aug 22, 2024
Developing a UI in mixed reality: spot panel
Three iterations of the Spot Panel UI in Spector — from one panel per defect, to a single shared panel, to the open/closed states with a chunky connector that finally clicked with shop-floor operators.
Andriy · 4 min read
May 5, 2024
We put data from the real world into AR
Tiny proof-of-concept that streams readings from an external device straight into the HoloLens 2 scene and pins them to the spot in space where the technician took the measurement.
Kosta · 1 min read
Apr 22, 2024
Ultrasonic testing grid: replacing chalk-and-mylar with AR
How an AR-generated 1×1-inch grid replaces hours of manual chalk-and-mylar gridding on pipes, tanks, and pressure vessels — and the spatial-mapping building blocks behind it.
Kosta · 4 min read
Apr 8, 2024
NDT sensors for augmented reality
Which off-the-shelf ultrasonic flaw detectors and thickness gauges have the wireless connectivity needed to stream readings into an AR headset — a snapshot from Olympus, Sonatest, Sonobotics, and Waygate.
Kosta · 2 min read
Mar 25, 2024
AR for NDT: augmented reality in nondestructive testing
Manual gridding and wheel-encoder mapping make NDT slow and error-prone. How AR-generated grids and on-part heatmaps remove both bottlenecks for ultrasonic and surface inspection.
Kosta · 3 min read
Mar 25, 2024
What is industrial AR and why should you still care in 2024?
A primer on industrial AR for innovation managers and investors: the five generic use cases on the shop floor, the AR / MR / VR / aR taxonomy, and the misconceptions to stop repeating.
Kosta · 6 min read
Feb 26, 2024
Digitizing aircraft MRO inspection paperwork: what's possible in 2024
10,000 job cards, 100+ people, a 40-day overhaul. Where AR-based inspection confirmation can cut hours of paperwork from aircraft heavy maintenance — and where regulation says paper stays.
Kosta · 5 min read
Feb 15, 2024
Spatial awareness is at the core of augmented reality
How spatial awareness in modern AR headsets changes the way factories index, create, and access technical information — and why location, not serial number, becomes the new key.
Kosta · 5 min read
Oct 29, 2019
Use case: visual measurement guide
Replacing the mylar stencil used to mark thickness-inspection spots on five-metre wing panels with a stable, in-tolerance Mixed Reality grid overlay.
Andriy · 1 min read
Sep 22, 2019
Reactor platform to go deeper into aviation
After eight months on the CFM-56 we made Reactor scalable enough to add the V2500 in weeks, untangled the navigation, and brought the platform fully offline.
Andriy · 1 min read
Sep 4, 2019
Mixed reality for borescope inspection
Concept for an MR application that helps borescope inspectors locate suspected damage on jet engines and cut through hundreds of inspection pictures and videos to a decision faster.
Andriy · 1 min read
Jul 29, 2019
Reactor — mixed reality platform for aviation maintenance
Enabled with the object recognition it intertwines physical and digital worlds allowing the user to steer the virtual by changing the real.
Andriy · 3 min read
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