Companies from food giants to appliance makers bet on augmented reality during pandemic

The more practical cousin of virtual reality, AR is mainly used to provide remote training and technical support to production sites and R&D centres. — Mediamodifier/Pixabay

The pandemic of 2020 is accelerating a lot of technologies and this one really is surreal.

When the coronavirus grounded planes around the world, Swiss food giant Nestle SA needed to figure out how to keep its 400 factories running smoothly. The company leaned on a futuristic technology it had previously dabbled in only as a backup: augmented reality.