A standard pair of smart glasses draws power through a lithium battery, a Wi-Fi radio, and a handful of exposed connectors, any one of which can produce enough of a spark to ignite a gas leak. That’s the reason most AR wearables aren’t allowed anywhere near an Oil & Gas, chemical, or petrochemical plant.
That’s not a policy problem. It’s a physics problem. Any electronic device that can produce a spark, an arc, or enough heat to ignite a flammable atmosphere is a genuine risk in a hazardous area, and the vast majority of smart glasses were never designed, tested, or certified to rule that risk out.
This article covers what “intrinsically safe” (or “intrinsic safety,” the terms are used interchangeably) actually means in practice, how ATEX zone classification works, and why it rules out most AR devices before anyone even gets to test one on-site.
What Does "Intrinsically Safe" Actually Mean?
Intrinsic safety is a design technique applied to electrical and electronic equipment used in hazardous environments. It works by limiting the electrical energy available within the circuit itself, both under normal operating conditions and in the event of a breakdown, to a level too low for a spark or thermal effect to ignite the nearby explosive atmosphere.
An intrinsically safe device is designed so that not even a short circuit, a damaged cable, or a battery fault can generate enough energy to cause an explosion. This is verified through fault analysis and independent certification.
What Is ATEX Certification?
“ATEX” is the common name for two related EU directives, aimed at different parties:
- Directive 2014/34/EU (“ATEX 114,” or the “ATEX product directive”) governs how equipment intended for sale for use in potentially explosive atmospheres must be designed, tested, and certified.
- Directive 1999/92/EC (“ATEX 137,” or the “ATEX workplace directive”) sets out employers’ obligations to classify hazardous areas and use only equipment suitable for that zone.
An “ATEX certified” device has passed the testing required under Directive 2014/34/EU and is marked to explicitly indicate which group, category, and zone it’s suitable for. The full regulatory picture is available on the European Commission’s official ATEX portal.
Protection Levels: How They Connect to Zones
Not all ATEX certifications are equal. Within intrinsic safety, there are three protection levels: Ex “ia,” “ib,” and “ic” representing decreasing degrees of safety margin, and each determines which ATEX zone the device can be installed in.
For a practical deep dive into these levels and the related standards, see this article from Endress+Hauser, which explains how intrinsic safety works in measurement and control instrumentation. These protection levels are defined under IEC/EN 60079-14, a standard developed by CENELEC, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization.
ATEX Hazardous Area Zones: 0, 1, and 2
Hazardous areas where explosive atmospheres may occur are classified into zones, based on how often and how long the explosive atmosphere is likely to be present. This classification determines exactly which equipment — including any wearable device — can legally be brought into that area.
Zone | Definition | Typical locations |
Zone 0 | Explosive atmosphere present continuously, for long periods, or frequently | Inside storage tanks, closed process vessels |
Zone 1 | Explosive atmosphere likely to occur in normal operation, occasionally | Areas around tank vents, loading bays, pump rooms |
Zone 2 | Explosive atmosphere not likely in normal operation, and if it occurs, only briefly | Perimeter areas around Zone 1, ventilated enclosures |
At EU level, this classification obligation for employers comes from Directive 1999/92/EC (the “ATEX Workplace Directive”), which requires employers to assess and classify areas where explosive atmospheres may occur, and to ensure that only equipment suitable for that zone is used there. You can read the full text of the directive on EUR-Lex.
For field service and remote assistance use cases, Zone 1 is what that matters most: it’s where a technician doing routine inspection or maintenance work will realistically be standing.
Why Most AR Wearables Can't Be Used in Zone 1
The enterprise AR wearable market has grown quickly over the past few years, but hazardous-area certification remains a narrow, expensive, and slow-to-achieve specialization. Certifying a device for Zone 1 typically means redesigning components for intrinsic safety, passing independent audits, and staying compliant through every hardware revision.
Relatively few wearable AR devices currently on the market are genuinely certified for Zone 1: the cost and complexity of the certification process rule out most devices designed for general industrial use.
For an HSE or operations team, this significantly limits the pool of candidates: if a device isn’t independently certified for the zone in which it’s to be used, it isn’t a suitable candidate.
Kiber 3 ATEX: Built for Hazardous Areas
This is exactly the gap Kiber 3 ATEX is designed to close: an intrinsically safe AR device built for Oil & Gas, chemical, and petrochemical environments.
In practice, this means field technicians in these environments can finally get the same hands-free, real-time remote assistance capabilities used elsewhere in industry: live video streaming to a remote expert, screen annotation, document and procedure overlay. If you want to see how this kind of remote support plays out in practice, we’ve covered it in more depth in Remote Inspections with AR Visors and Web-Based Assistance.
The impact of this approach is measured: an independent study on the use of Kiber 3 ATEX in North Sea operations recorded a CO₂ reduction of more than 3,000 kg per single use, by removing the need for a specialist to travel to an offshore hazardous-area site.
If your operations sit outside a classified zone, or you need a lighter, more versatile device for broader industrial field use, it’s worth comparing against Kiberscope, Kiber’s newest multi-feature wearable, at just 70g.
Certification, more broadly, is a recurring theme for hazardous-area work —Kiber’s AR equipment was also the first to receive DNV Type Approval for offshore inspections, if that’s a compliance angle relevant to your operations too.
Real-World Impact: Remote Assistance in Oil & Gas
The value of this becomes concrete in real deployments. During Full Speed and Full Load testing of an LM9000 turbine for Baker Hughes’ Arctic LNG 2 project, Kiber’s remote assistance technology connected more than 80 experts from around the world to the test facility in Massa, Italy without requiring them to travel to the site.
See Kiber’s Oil & Gas solutions for more on how this plays out across the sector.
See It in Action
If your teams operate in classified hazardous areas and need remote assistance technology that’s actually allowed on site, it’s worth seeing Kiber 3 ATEX
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