Multi-Reality Interfaces – Remote Monitoring and Maintenance in modular Factory Environments

Multi-Reality Interfaces – Remote Monitoring and Maintenance in modular Factory Environments
Jochen Grün, Tobias Gerber, Thorsten Herfet
Proceedings of the 14th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing (INCOM 12) IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing (INCOM-2012), May 23-25, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract:
This paper deals with the approach of multi-reality interfaces in the context of e-maintenance in modular factory environments, specifically remote monitoring and maintenance scenarios. Through their rich visualization capabilities (stereoscopic video & 3D graphics) multi-reality interfaces offer a way to aggregate and structure the wide-spread variety of information from different sources that is required to analyze such complex scenarios. Additionally, they serve the purpose of making collaboration with on-site personal easier and more efficient in time and cost. Finally, the browser based implementation fits very well into the web based world that a modular factory environment represents and make the presented solution extremely adaptive to (non-)industrial HMI.
Keywords:
remote maintenance, modular factory, virtual reality, manufacturing processes, production