Augmented reality to support maintenance technicians

We’ve all been in this situation, doing a manual job while following instructions (to realise a recipe or building your new furniture for instance). How pleasant would it be to have your hands free while processing the actions list?

Augmented Reality allows integrating 2D or 3D virtual elements (visuals, acoustic…) to the user world perception. This technology is turning virtual as real as possible.

To improve maintenance operation, Berger-Levrault’s team works on applications including Augmented Reality with HoloLens glasses created by Microsoft. A first application is an oriented maintenance application to assist a technician on its intervention and a second application with remote assistance.
Combining assistance and augmented reality allows applications to ease and accelerate maintenance process.

The 3D and spatial capabilities of the augmented reality headset allow technicians to display the 3D model of the equipment being work on, to diagnose the failure and possibly develop an action plan before even starting performing the job on the real equipment.

In addition, the technician has the possibility of calling on an expert to help him during his work: The technician shares a live view with the expert, which simplifies the remote assistance process by eliminating the need to hold a smartphone when showing the equipment involved to the expert; the technician’s virtual workspace, which contains all the information necessary for carrying out the technical operation (the list of works, documents, videos, images, etc.) is also shared with the expert, which allows them to have an overview of the work that needs to be done.

On each step of the maintenance process, the solution will provide the user information and documentation (photos, videos) needed at the right moment using sensor IoT technology. The application will outline information and guide the user all the way to make operations smoother.
On this video, you can see how the prototype provides the work order, multimedia support files, dashboard for each operation and guide the user.

To resume, this application improves the overall maintenance work, the Mean time to repair (MTTR) can be reduced thanks to the availability of the necessary data to conduct the work, it allows the creation of complete and accurate reports: duration, realized processes, pictures and recording of the maintenance work, etc. It improves the operators’ capabilities to perform level 1 maintenance tasks. Overall, our clients found the prototype attractive, efficient and original.