Creating communication between machines and VR/AR devices to remotely assist on the shop floor

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications are growing and growing – current examples are in interior design, architecture, or virtual museum tours. However, also industry offers great opportunities for VR and AR application. This could be for trainings and onboarding, or live remote assistance. Realtime data communication from machines and an AR/VR visualisation would open the doors to remote machine inspection, error assistance, or virtual shop floor tours.

The industrial application of AR/VR technology is the goal of the MachViz project, that will be conducted in collaboration with Connec2, a company that offers an XR collaboration platform for lifelike designs, review sessions, and work instructions.

The goal of this project is to successfully connect virtual and physical worlds through an OPC UA connection for a chosen machine, e.g. a robot or a precision assembly machine. By using a VR/AR device, the user could see a digital replica of the machine with the machine status and the way it operates. This could be used to, for example, provide insight into the machine’s performance over the last 24 hours or overlay system properties that would normally be invisible.

Industry partner

WORK PACKAGES

Every FIP-AM@UT project is divided into separate work packages, to clearly distinguish the several stages and purposes within the project. The MachViz project consists of four work packages.

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WP 1: Inception, use case and scope definition

The use case and scope of project will be defined

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WP 2: Data interpretation and analysis

Identifying technical project requirements

WP 3: Building demonstrator: Machine side

Serving the data of the machine using OPC UA

WP 4: Building demonstrator: AR/VR side

Processing the data from the machine to create AR/VR environment

For more information on MachViz, feel free to reach out to

Barry te Dorsthorst

Barry te Dorsthorst

Research Engineer