Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

Remote maintenance assistance using real-time augmented reality authoring

Maintenance operations and lifecycle engineering have largely been considered one of the most expensive and time-consuming components for industrial equipment. Numerous organizations continually devote large quantities of resources towards maintaining equipment. As such, any optimizations that would reduce maintenance errors and expenses could lead to substantial time and cost savings. Unfortunately, there are often not enough specialists to meet the demand, forcing localized technicians to perform on-site maintenance on equipment outside their area of expertise. Augmented reality (AR) is one technology that has already been shown to improve the maintenance process. While powerful, AR has its own set of challenges, from content authoring to spatial perception. This work details a system that puts both the power of AR and the knowledge of a specialist directly into the hands of an on-site technician. An application was developed that enables a specialist to deliver AR instructions in real-time to assist a technician performing on-site maintenance. Using a novel and simplified authoring interface, specialists can create AR content in real-time, with little to no prior knowledge of augmented reality or the system itself. There has been ample research on different AR-supported processes, such as real-time authoring, video monitoring, and off-site assistance. However, much less work has been done to integrate them and leverage existing personnel knowledge to both author and deliver real-time AR instructions. This work details the development and implementation of such a system. A technical evaluation was also performed to ensure real-time connectivity in geographically distributed environments. Three network configurations were evaluated. A high-latency high-bandwidth network was used to represent a typical modern maintenance facility. A low-bandwidth network was evaluated to mimic older or more isolated maintenance environments. Lastly, a 4G LTE network was tested, showing the potential for the system to be used across global locations. Under all network configurations, the system effectively facilitated the complete disassembly of a hydraulic pump assembly

Maritime Safety Education with VR Technology (MarSEVR)

This paper presents the development of a virtual training technology that can be used in maritime safety training. This system is under testing phase and has being developed with a multidisciplinary team consisting of maritime specialists, computer scientists, business developers and VR experts. The technology is a cost effective, portable maritime training system that can be used on board, in training centers or even at home environments. Boosting situation awareness in navigation with VR-training applications is an easy and efficient method to practice whenever an officer has time for training. This can be done in an effective and fun way, giving measurable training progress indexes. The paper emphasizes on the need of VR Training in the shipping industry, the industry challenges and the description of the proof-of the-concept through the MarSEVR (Maritime Safety Education with VR) technology. The main objective in this paper is to present a prototype of the technology which can be utilized to train trainees and professionals in immersive training scenarios

Evaluating Immersive Teleoperation Interfaces: Coordinating Robot Radiation Monitoring Tasks in Nuclear Facilities

We present a virtual reality (VR) teleoperation interface for a ground-based robot, featuring dense 3D environment reconstruction and a low latency video stream, with which operators can immersively explore remote environments. At the UK Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA) Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) facility, we applied the interface in a user study where trained robotics operators completed simulated nuclear monitoring and decommissioning style tasks to compare VR and traditional teleoperation interface designs. We found that operators in the VR condition took longer to complete the experiment, had reduced collisions, and rated the generated 3D map with higher importance when compared to non-VR operators. Additional physiological data suggested that VR operators had a lower objective cognitive workload during the experiment but also experienced increased physical demand. Overall the presented results show that VR interfaces may benefit work patterns in teleoperation tasks within the nuclear industry, but further work is needed to investigate how such interfaces can be integrated into real world decommissioning workflows

Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Advance

Reliable instrumentation, information, and contro

Evaluating immersive teleoperation interfaces: coordinating robot radiation monitoring tasks in nuclear facilities

We present a virtual reality (VR) teleoperation interface for a ground-based robot, featuring dense 3D environment reconstruction and a low latency video stream, with which operators can immersively explore remote environments. At the UK Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA) Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) facility, we applied the interface in a user study where trained robotics operators completed simulated nuclear monitoring and decommissioning style tasks to compare VR and traditional teleoperation interface designs. We found that operators in the VR condition took longer to complete the experiment, had reduced collisions, and rated the generated 3D map with higher importance when compared to non-VR operators. Additional physiological data suggested that VR operators had a lower objective cognitive workload during the experiment but also experienced increased physical demand. Overall the presented results show that VR interfaces may benefit work patterns in teleoperation tasks within the nuclear industry, but further work is needed to investigate how such interfaces can be integrated into real world decommissioning workflows

The Role of Maintenance Operator in Industrial Manufacturing Systems: Research Topics and Trends

Maintenance contributes to gaining high business performance, guarantees system availability and reliability as well as safe and sustainable operations. Maintenance activity effectiveness depends on competences and the skills of operators whose performance strongly affects maintenance and production operations. The research field of human issues in industrial maintenance was deeply addressed in the literature; however, the current industrial paradigm, which focusses on the integration of new technologies in conventional manufacturing operations to support human performance, sheds light on new challenges for enterprises and opportunities for research in this field. While some literature reviews in the field of human errors and human factors are available, no study investigated the main topics, research trends and challenges related to the role of maintenance operators in manufacturing systems. This paper addresses the current state-of-the-art role of maintenance operators in manufacturing systems, providing an overview of the main studies. A systematic literature review was carried out to identify significant papers. Then, a topic modelling algorithm was used to detect the main topics of the selected papers to provide the research trends of the subject. The identified topics provided interesting research insights on the human role in industrial maintenance. Research trends and further research opportunities were defined