Utilising web technology to provide 3D assisted remote machine maintenance

Assigned Human-Computer Interaction Bachelor Thesis No Affiliation

Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop a framework for 3D representations of industrial manufacturing machines using web technology, to allow parts to be marked within it and to track this marking in another client. After developing this framework, its usefulness in remote maintenance in an industrial context will be evaluated by comparing the time and error rate in identifying machine parts with and without the solution. In addition, the user experience of the application is evaluated using the UEQ.

Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Problem Statement
  • 1.2 Approach
• 2 Requirements and Tasks
• Bibliography
• Appendix

1 Introduction

COne of the most relevant changes in the world of manufacturing globally as well as in Germany right now is industry 4.0 (2021). As part of this movement towards more connected and smart manufacturing machines the requirements for maintenance of these increasingly complex machines shifts. Repairing and maintaining these machines is no job for general labor anymore and requires specially trained personal often only employed by the manufacturer of said machines or their contractors. This led to changes in machine maintenance and repair which are nicely analyzed and summarized in a literature review by (Silvestri et al., 2020). Following quote is part of the conclusion of this cited paper and presents a list of findings:

“… • the role of the “Operator 4.0” appears to be remodeled consisting mainly in supervising the automated production through advanced monitoring systems and user interfaces; • the operator can be instructed by videos or text information through smart devices and can share in real-time its findings and experience, contributing to a continuous improvement and development of an efficient and safe maintenance” (Silvestri et al., 2020).

As presented by the conclusion of this very comprehensive literature review the interest in self-maintenance and remote maintenance has been continually growing in the last years and the amount of scientific work done on these topics reflect this.

That is why the industry partner of my thesis; pragmatic industries GmbH is in- terested in extending its portfolio of industrial machine software-solutions with an approach to work in this growing market.

1.1 Problem Statement

Modern manufacturing machines are highly complex and require a lot of general and machine specific knowledge to maintain and repair. Due to economic reasons it is not common for highly skilled labor to be available at every deployment of ma- chines. This makes it common practice for machine owners to request maintenance personal from the manufacturer. In today’s global value chains its possible that a manufacturer deploys its machines far away from its workers in foreign countries. This makes the remote assistance of machine owners attractive especially for smaller repairs and problems which would economically and time wise not warrant the fly-in of a trained repair personal. The intended solution produced in this thesis would make this remote process easier and more accessible to the aforementioned untrained personal in recognizing the relevant components and taking the correct actions.

1.2 Approach

The goal of the project is to build an extendible framework for 3D web represen- tations of industrial machines and allow two clients to interact upon this represen- tation. One client acts as trained maintenance personal and can select and mark specific parts within the machine to help explain procedures to the other client in a remote interaction context like a (video-) call. Within this project the scope will be limited to approximately one or maybe two machines, but a focus in development will be that the solution stays extendible and can later easily be used and parametrized for more machines. After the development of this application a study to compare the needed time and errors at finding specific parts in a machine with and without the use of the tool will be conducted. In this experts working in the industry will act as remote instructors for an untrained participant physically present at the machine. The instructor will guide the untrained participant through identifying a list of components of the machine with either only a (video-) call or additionally the developed tool at their disposal. The resulting time to complete the tasks and the number of failed attempts at identifying will be measured and quantitatively compared. Additionally, the user experience will be evaluated by the participants afterwards by the means of a User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ).

2 Requirements and Tasks

As discussed with the industry partner at pragmatic industries GmbH the project will implement a framework for 3D representations of machine(s) supported within the project via Babylon.js (2021). Babylon.js is an Open Source game and rendering engine acting as a development framework on the basis of WebGL. The choice of web technology is driven by the requirement to enable simple cross-platform use via the web browser. Babylon.js is chosen with the intention to simplify and speed up the development. The application will be implemented in a Typescript context to avoid typing mis- matches and provide a solid development environment with good type ahead support and improved code quality compared to plain JavaScript/ECMAScript. Further technical specifications are not final and will be finalized later on after testing the options available.

Bibliography

Babylon.js: Powerful, beautiful, simple, open - web-based 3d at its best. (2021, September 2). Retrieved September 2, 2021, from https://www.babylonjs. com/. (Cit. on p. 4).

Bmwi - german federal ministry for economic affairs and energy - industrie 4.0. (2021). Retrieved September 2, 2021, from https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/ EN/Dossier/industrie-40.html. (Cit. on p. 1).

Silvestri, L., Forcina, A., Introna, V., Santolamazza, A., & Cesarotti, V. (2020). Maintenance transformation through industry 4.0 technologies: A systematic literature review. Computers in Industry, 123, 103335. https://doi.org/https: //doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2020.103335 (cit. on p. 1).

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