Nowadays, the rising implementation of IIoT technologies has enabled data collection and information from productions lines using Industrials Protocols such as OPC-UA and MQTT. These Data provides information about the factory, the production and the produced product. These collected data are useful for multiple stakeholders: data can enable operative tasks, digital twins, and digital services such as assets monitoring. However, the literature argued about the best solution to fully visualize and exploit these data, where HMI, SCADA and Dashboard are the most common solutions.
The SUPSI Institute of System and Technologies for Sustainable Production (ISTePS) has long experience in research on Human-Machine interaction. In this regard, SUPSI is currently evaluating Augmented Reality(AR) as a complementary tool for factory supervision.
Microsoft HoloLens in a production environment will enable operators to experience a new efficient interaction with machines.
Mini Factory power Consumption AR Visualization
The Mini Factory 4.0 is a small scale production line that produces and assembles a tangram game. The Mini Factory is equipped with several devices, a linear motor, 3D printers, a laser engraver, a SCARA Robot, and an automatic warehouse.
We are currently developing a HoloLens app with Unity and Vuforia QR Codes that will enable Operators to visualize factory data from the mini-factory: Status, the process progresses, alarms and warnings, tracking of the product, sensors values and power consumption.
We are especially interested in monitoring Power Consumption, usually neglected in the production lines' design phase. In this regard, a Smart IoT Sensor will be installed to measure the electrical power consumption. The data will be collected via Wi-Fi and accessed via the cloud.
Through the hololens googles, the Operator will have the ability to see the real-time power consumption of each device. The energy consumption will be shown in units of KWh, CO2 emission, and Swiss francs.
The application aims to integrate an energy monitoring tool to enable companies to take active action to reduce energy consumption and improve theirs processes to achieve more sustainable production.
This project will be carried out in close collaboration with the company providing the Smart IoT Sensor for energy consumption monitoring, this to further develop the sensor and the relative software with the aim of obtaining a new version dedicated solely to industrial applications.
After the first implementation phase, students will be involved in the project in order to teach them the basics of AR on one hand and to further develop it on the other.
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