An AR scenario for Aviation: Atheer
One blog on AREA member Atheer’s new page outlines how Augmented Reality applications are ‘taking off’ in the aviation industry. This specific blog outlines a scenario where an aircraft mechanic is repairing a custom jet engine.
The mechanic is on the ground with a plane in Boston that’s in need of engineer servicing, and she is using AR technology (particularly “see what I see” video conferencing features) on the repair with an engineer in San Jose who worked on the original design of the engine.
The engineer can use smart glasses to electronically “circle” a part that needs attention (shown on the screen of the smart glasses so that both the mechanic and the remotely-connected engineer).
The engineer in San Jose can provide more detailed guidance to the mechanic in Boston, getting her to look more closely at various aspects of the aircraft part that she is working on – and provide real-time feedback to the mechanic on the next steps that she needs to take.
How many challenges are solved at once:
- Allowing the engineer in San Jose to deliver detailed, contextual guidance that allows him to see and interact with the malfunctioning aircraft part, so that he is able to scale the delivery of his highly-valued skills to the mechanic in Boston (without having to travel in-person to do so).
- Using an engineer in San Jose to troubleshoot an MRO issue in Boston, which helps provide national and international scale for the engineer’s employer.
- Offering the mechanic in Boston immediate access to the latest task checklists (for working on the troublesome part) – and any existing training videos – directly via her smart glasses before initiating the video conference call to the engineer in . This ensures that valuable aviation engineer time is only sought when other support avenues have been exhausted.
- Getting the right information to the right place – quickly and easily. Using smart glasses (and either voice, gestures or head movements to access the information and remote experts she needs), the mechanic is safely able to get at all the information she needs without having to remove work gloves, move away from the part she is working with or otherwise be distracted from the task at hand.