Augmented Reality Meets Manufacturing
An article on Machine Design.com under the section ‘industrial automation’, which postulates on the recent developments in IIoT which have brought about great potential for AR to revolutionise the manufacturing sector.
The article states that in fact, AR completes the entire digital ecosystem as a part of Industry 4.0. It connects workers with equipment, letting them interact with sensor data to identify exact components that need maintenance, replacement, or upgrading.
The article goes on to give an of how Augmented Reality is being used in manufacturing by Thyssenkrupp, a leader in elevator manufacturing, already uses AR to guide workers during maintenance using Microsoft HoloLens, a self-contained, wearable holographic computer. The smart glasses let workers inspect the elevator virtually before going to the site. Once there, they can quickly identify components that need replacement or maintenance. They can also instantly access tutorial videos or talk to trainers in real-time for assistance. The company also uses AR to measure stairs and capture digital point-cloud data needed for quickly designing and manufacturing stairlifts.
Developing lightweight 3D CAD models for AR is one area seeing significant activity. Native 3D CAD models are large and represent actual products to be manufactured, including all of the nuts and bolts. However, the detailed native CAD product model is not fit for AR visualization. For AR purposes, the models need to load quickly. And that is why re-modeling or a conversion process is needed. Although part of this conversion can be automated through AR publishing tools, it still takes a manual effort to ensure the details required in the AR environment aren’t compromised.
To read the full article, please click here.