Page 20 - Industrial Plants

missing documentation useful for the revamp activity. for maintenance and assembly that accelerates the
We will describe the original application and we will technicians’ acquisition of new skill on maintenance
explain how this can be used in a typical revamp procedures. Haritos et al. [6] describe a mobile AR
activity. application for training in the field of aircraft maintenance,
As an example, the team at site can request a list of the to replace traditional training practices, i.e. on-the-job
location of existing line supports, compared to the training. The AR training system can be useful for job
known fixed points (civil foundations or line notes) and tasks training and for job tasks guidance for novice
the team in the office can indicate the information on technicians in a real working environment. Regenbrecht
the real site. This can reduce errors and speed up the et al. in [7] present some application examples, where
collection of information. AR is used in the automotive and aerospace industries.
In a previous paper [8] Bordegoni et al. described an
application for remote maintenance based on the
Augmented Reality in industrial combination of mobile tools with AR technologies. The
applications aim was to allow companies to perform remote
maintenance activities on various industrial products,
Since the end of the twentieth century the research with no need of structured environments or high speed
community has proposed the adoption of Augmented connections. Also, the application was designed to
Reality (AR) as a support for industry. As an example, reduce the authoring time and was based on traditional
one of the steps of product lifecycle where Augmented input/output interfaces so that the skilled operator
Reality can be used with success, is that of could use it for instructing the unskilled one. The
commissioning. Here, all systems and components of application has been tested for years on industrial case
a product must be installed and function as requested studies and new functionalities have been introduced
by the client. Georgel et al. [1] propose using AR to that can be useful in a remote collaborative maintenance
perform discrepancy checks following the construction task.
of a powerplant. The idea is to find differences between We propose the use of the same application for a
a 3D CAD model and the constructed plant. Such collaborative design task for the revamping of a
discrepancies can arise from outdated building refinery.
instructions, design incompatibilities or human errors.
The proposed system aligns high-resolution images
from the plant with the CAD model. Augmented Reality and mobile
technology to exchange
information

Allowing team members to communicate
through text, symbols and free-hand The architecture of the application is of type Client-
sketches, this application was specifically Server, which well supports the connection of two or
built to work with low speed internet more remote team members, as illustrated in Figure 1.
connections The engineers using the client application take some
pictures of the real environment and send them to the
server (office). These pictures are used for the client as
a marker to correctly superimpose instructions on the
real environment in augmented reality, and for the
Furthermore, since the beginning, AR has been server to add information onto the real environment.
recognised as being an interesting support in the Server and clients can exchange also text messages.
industry for maintenance applications, assembly, and Furthermore, the skilled operator can sketch on the
repair of machinery [2, 3]. For example, Feiner et al. in picture.
[4] describe KARMA, a prototype of an Augmented The server can simultaneously communicate with one
Reality system that presents a simple end-user laser or more clients working on the same site.
printer maintenance application based on a see- The application has been developed so that it can be
through Head-Mounted Display. One of the main used with various hardware devices. Currently, the
advantages of using an AR application compared to engineers in the office can use a personal computer,
traditional documentation is that the operator can equipped with traditional input and output devices
access the information necessary for performing the (keyboard, mouse and monitor), or a tablet or a mobile
activities directly in the working area, without the need device equipped with the Android operating system or
to refer to the traditional printed manual. iOS.
As described in [5] AR also is an effective training tool The on-site engineers can use a tablet (which is also

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