Supporting Remote Maintenance in Industry 4.0 through Augmented Reality

Abstract

Due to the Industry 4.0 initiative, Augmented Reality (AR) has started to be considered one of the most interesting technologies companies should invest in, especially to improve their maintenance services. Several technological limitations have prevented AR to become an effective industrial tool in the past. Now some of them have been overcome, some others not yet by off-the-shelf technologies. In this paper, we present a solution for remote maintenance based on off-the-shelf mobile and AR technologies. The architecture of the application allows us to remotely connect a skilled operator in a control room with an unskilled one located where the maintenance task has to be performed. This application, which has been initially described in a previous work, has been improved on the basis of feedback received by industrial partners. We describe the important features we have added and the rationale behind them to make the remote communication more effective

Real-Time Remote Maintenance Support Based on Augmented Reality (AR)

“…Thus, there is no practical limitation on the use of equipment. In comparison with other approaches, presented in References [3][4][5][6], the functionality of remote connectivity combined with the broad compatibility of the app further extends mobility of the user, i.e., the shop-floor technician in an industrial environment. More specifically, in Reference [4], the technicians have to carry a laptop computer along with a USB web camera in order to establish communication with the expert engineer and proceed with the maintenance operations.…”

“…In the research work presented in Reference [4], the authors have carried out research on the recent trends around the Smart Maintenance paradigm by investigating recent publications as well as by extracting useful empirical knowledge. In Reference [5], a collaborative remote maintenance framework has been suggested. Although the research work is inspiring and of good quality, the framework implementation is based on technologies and equipment that currently can be considered as obsolete, as the technician has limited mobility since a PC is required by their side so as to visualize the AR instructions.…”

“…Besides the failure forecast, a major issue identified is the completion of accurate and error-free maintenance operations, and, thus, the reassurance of fully functional machines in the earliest time possible. Based on that concept, a considerable amount of research effort has been put on the design and development of real-time maintenance support tools and applications based on mobile devices to prevent unnecessary errors from happening [3][4][5][6]. With the evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as well as the massive break out of augmented reality (AR), the research community extended that approach by exploiting the advantages of AR for data projection during the maintenance operations [6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

6DoF Object Tracking based on 3D Scans for Augmented Reality Remote Live Support

“…These solutions are either solely showing augmentations in a 2D static manner [37] or they use outdated methods like marker tracking [30,38]. Recently, in [39] a Remote Live Support system was presented based on a client-server architecture that uses the Vuforia tracking framework but requires user collaboration in setting up the tracker by taking pictures from different views around the object. Additionally, it seems that the annotations of the expert are not registered in 3D but in 2D since the geometry of the objects is not fully known.…”

Remote maintenance assistance using real-time augmented reality authoring

“…Masoni et al developed a system that utilizes off-the-shelf mobile technology to allow an expert to create content in real-time, and share knowledge with an on-site technician [56].…”