Can AR have industrial applications? Yes, very well

In recent years, AR is one of the hottest technologies in most of the planning documents of Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing, which has been mentioned repeatedly. Few industrial enterprises have expressed their complete lack of interest in evaluating AR and knowing what benefits it will bring to their enterprises.

But in most cases, the AR application scenarios being discussed are related to maintenance in one way or another. Not because it's easy to implement, but AR completely solves common maintenance problems and makes it easy to figure out how to do it.

German academia and industry believe that the concept of "Industry 4.0" is the fourth industrial revolution dominated by intelligent manufacturing, or revolutionary production methods. There are two main themes, one is "intelligent factory", the other is "intelligent production", mainly involving the whole enterprise production logistics management, human-computer interaction and 3D, AR and other new technologies in the industrial production process application.

Based on the cooperation with industrial enterprises, this paper focuses on AR on the production line, and understands what help AR can bring to the daily work of the technical personnel who carry out real-time work on the production line. The main reference is not related to maintenance of several indicators: key performance indicators (KPI) visualization, standard operating instructions, man-machine interaction, and traceability, etc.

After testing, we found some interesting patterns:

1. The key feature of AR "Information Visualization"

In "Industry 4.0", products always keep their own information in the complete supply chain and production cycle. In addition to product characteristics, they also integrate information storage, sensing, wireless communication, self-detection and other functions.

The characteristic value of AR lies in the way information is presented to users. It is superimposed on the "reality", and information, buttons and graphics are "calibrated" to the relevant real objects, so that the product, as a carrier, can achieve the visual presentation of information.

In application, with the help of AR, the valve icon and three-dimensional label can be used to illustrate the status of the valve, so that the operator on the production line can intuitively learn the information. But simply overlaying a planar information table about the valve on a valuable real-time image and associating it with tools and objects in a more complex way reduces the value of the information and makes it more difficult for the operator on the production line.

2. Standardization of operation instructions

In the production line of automobile engines and other equipment, AR can identify the screws that need to be unscrewed through 3D recognition technology, and superimpose 3D model instructions on the real physical components to guide the buttons that need to be operated to rotate left or right. The use of dynamic video during assembly (AR technologies such as enhanced panoramic video display in low visibility conditions are already operable) can save a lot of time and reduce error rates for inexperienced operators. In similar scenarios, AR can play a standardized and innovative role.

At Boeing aircraft production lines, workers use AR glasses complete aircraft fuselage internal complex wiring harness assembly, rather than according to the hands of the internal structure of instructions manual or refer to the PDF drawing step by step to complete the wire harness assembly and connection, data statistics, a move that make Boeing workers wiring harness assembly error rate by 50%, time reduced by 25%.

3. Interaction between AR and Industry 4.0

Under Industry 4.0, the interaction between the workers on the production line and the equipment and equipment is multi-mode fusion. Besides the traditional hands and feet, voice, eyeball, facial expression and so on can all become information transmission channels to interact with the equipment. I have to say that this is closer to the natural interaction of human instinct. All the dynamics and changes of the body will produce effective information. The interaction of multi-mode integration will undoubtedly improve the working efficiency.

AR intelligent terminals are born to "free hands" and help operators to complete operations such as guidance, detection, information storage, remote collaboration, and IoT interconnection in different ways in normal operation scenarios. Among them, hand movement is only one of many interactive ways. So AR is a great opportunity to change the way users interact with machines and production lines.

4. Flexible production

In the process of producing products in the manufacturing industry, the problems of increasing personalized demand, fast product replacement and shortened life cycle are obvious. On the one hand, the upgrading and transformation of the traditional rigid production line is time-consuming and labor-consuming. On the other hand, the updating speed of the production line lags far behind the product updating speed. The failure to reuse expensive equipment has become one of the biggest costs in the manufacturing industry, thus making flexible production the primary consideration of enterprises.

SAP with shenyang institute of automation of Chinese Academy of Sciences (shen) by the joint development of the first 4.0 demonstration industrial production line, personalized customization model car, for example, users can directly on the network channel DIY (such as color and model) and place the order, order information sent to the ERP, MES manufacturing execution system, PLC control system and HANA big data processing platform, etc. The entire information chain.

What needs to be paid special attention to is that the whole manufacturing process, from product placing orders, production planning to material preparation and production line adjustment, is reconstructed in the virtual information space. Consumers, factory managers and engineers can all act as monitoring parties.

In this process, it is not difficult to find the value space of AR. With the help of AR, consumers can select vehicles anytime and anywhere, and view the entire "AR production line" online. For managers and engineers, real-time inspection and control are also possible.

5. Rigorous evaluation and coordination

AR has huge potential in the field of industrial manufacturing, not just maintenance. But it's not a comprehensive solution. AR itself is not about creating information, but about presenting, integrating, and optimizing information and data in different ways.

In the era of "Industry 4.0", AR is a new partner, but it also needs to achieve "intelligent production" together with other "partners" such as robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, cloud computing, big data and so on. When choosing AR, industrial enterprises need to deeply cooperate with AR solution providers to jointly conduct rigorous evaluation of the solution, but at present, this is not easy.

Although there are still many problems in the industrial application of AR, we should believe that "AR+ industry" is a direction of great value and is developing rapidly. We should know that a year ago, many AR presentations were still in PPT, but now there are a lot of industrial AR applications based on smart phones, tablets and AR glasses. This process won't take long, and "Industry 4.0" is embracing AR.

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(The article is from: sohu Manufacturing Ecosystem)