A Mobile Solution for Augmenting a Manufacturing Environment with User-Generated Annotations

Abstract

The ever-increasing complexity in manufacturing environments has caused delay and uncertainty for on-site personnel when retrieving critical information. Currently, information associated with manufacturing environments is created and stored in centralized terminals and even paper-based logbooks. Any delays in accessing this information can hinder critical decision-making processes that are essential to ensure maximum efficiency and productivity. To increase the competitiveness of manufacturing companies, the authors present a user-oriented markerless augmented reality authoring solution for the manufacturing environment utilizing the capability of a modern smartphone or head-mounted display. With a one-time setup and calibration, the end user is able to augment a physical workspace with a digital layer and annotate any stationary object with application data including maintenance records, service tickets, and usage logs. By directly mapping the data onto a relevant physical object, it allows more efficient reuse and better contextualization of manufacturing information. The backend expandable data structure also enhances extensibility so that the users can modify the digital layer with ease when the physical environment changes. This annotation tool defines a novel way of managing manufacturing information to help companies work more efficiently and effectively.

Mixed reality in design prototyping: A systematic review

“…Found Papers Initial Papers (Park et al, 2009;Verlinden et al, 2003) Citation Traversal Aromaa and Väänänen, 2016;Barbieri et al, 2013;Bordegoni, Polistina, et al, 2010;Bruno et al, 2012;Bruno et al, 2011;Faust et al, 2018;Huang et al, 2012;Kim and Nam, 2015;Lee et al, 2011;Lee et al, 2009;Lin et al, 2019;Park and Moon, 2013;Simon et al, 2012) Keyword Search (Arrighi and Mougenot, 2019;Fröhlich et al, 2018;Funk et al, 2014;He et al, 2019;Heun et al, 2013;Ibanez et al, 2015;Kelly et al, 2018;Lucas et al, 2018;Maurya et al, 2018;Mora et al, 2016;Peng et al, 2018;Zhang and Kwok, 2018) From the first corpus of 30 papers, 72 augmentation labels were defined. After familiarisation, labels were grouped into like categories as part of the thematic analysis process described in Section 2.3, leading to the dimensions of value shown in Section 3.3.…”

“…Annotations, such as design rationale or assembly/disposal notes, can be integrated and visualised as part of the prototype (Fakourfar et al, 2016;Lee et al, 2009;Miksik et al, 2015;Shi et al, 2017). Knowledge Management also includes uses such as source control integration (He et al, 2019) and connections to open data sources such as component libraries (Stemasov et al, 2020). The ability to augment two interfacing components could quickly highlight overlapping geometries (Manou et al, 2019;Moteki et al, 2018) and be used to document design decisions and assembly instructions (De Amicis et al, 2018;Funk et al, 2015).…”

“…Figure 12: (left) Retrievable annotations (He et al, 2019), (centre) viewing dimensions and manufacturing defects (Moteki et al, 2018), (right) utilising and editing from an existing library of components (Stemasov et al, 2020).…”

MARMA: A Mobile Augmented Reality Maintenance Assistant for Fast-Track Repair Procedures in the Context of Industry 4.0

“…On the other hand, there is interest in the development of remote maintenance and repair support, where Mourtzis et al [29] presented a framework about real-time communication channels between shop floor operators and maintenance experts, using AR guidance. Aiming at real-time interaction with other users, He et al [30] presented an AR annotation tool that maps the environment and creates notes with limited actions. Arntz et al [31] presented an indoor navigation AR approach to support shop floor operators in heavy industries, providing handy 3D visual instructions during evacuations.…”

An Integrated Mobile Augmented Reality Digital Twin Monitoring System

“…The maturity of multimedia techniques has enriched the content and interaction styles of AR applications [24,25].…”