Augmented Reality (AR) technologies for supporting maintenance operations have been an academic research topic for around 50 years now. In the last decade, major progresses have been made and the AR technology is getting closer to being implemented in industry. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of AR have been explored and quantified in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for industrial maintenance. Unfortunately, some technical issues still prevent AR from being suitable for industrial applications. This paper aims to show, through the results of a systematic literature review, the current state of the art of AR in maintenance and the most relevant technical limitations. The analysis included filtering from a large number of publications to 30 primary studies published between 1997 and 2017. The results indicate a high fragmentation among hardware, software and AR solutions which lead to a high complexity for selecting and developing AR systems. The results of the study show the areas where AR technology still lacks maturity. Future research directions are also proposed encompassing hardware, tracking and user-AR interaction in industrial maintenance is proposed.

/pdf/a-systematic-review-of-augmented-reality-applications-in-2a9ygqrdpa.pdf

A systematic review of augmented reality applications in maintenance

We present a survey of recent work on robot manipulation and sensing of deformable objects, a field with relevant applications in diverse industries such as medical (e.g. surgery assistance), food handling, manufacturing, and domestic chores (e.g. folding clothes). We classify the reviewed approaches into four categories based on the type of object they manipulate. Furthermore, within this object classification we divide the approaches based on the particular task they perform on the deformable object. Finally, we conclude this survey with a discussion of the current state of the art and propose future directions within the proposed classification.

/pdf/robotic-manipulation-and-sensing-of-deformable-objects-in-tajhrn5gez.pdf

Robotic manipulation and sensing of deformable objects in domestic and industrial applications: a survey:

In the past two decades, augmented reality (AR) has received a growing amount of attention by researchers in the manufacturing technology community, because AR can be applied to address a wide range of problems throughout the assembly phase in the lifecycle of a product, e.g., planning, design, ergonomics assessment, operation guidance and training. However, to the best of authors’ knowledge, there has not been any comprehensive review of AR-based assembly systems. This paper aims to provide a concise overview of the technical features, characteristics and broad range of applications of AR-based assembly systems published between 1990 and 2015. Among these selected articles, two thirds of them were published between 2005 and 2015, and they are considered as recent pertinent works which will be discussed in detail. In addition, the current limitation factors and future trends in the development will also be discussed.

/pdf/a-comprehensive-survey-of-augmented-reality-assembly-4v9flaozri.pdf

A comprehensive survey of augmented reality assembly research

Assembly planning and evaluation is an important component of the product design process in which details about how parts of a new product will be put together are formalized. A well designed assembly process should take into account various factors such as optimum assembly time and sequence, tooling and fixture requirements, ergonomics, operator safety, and accessibility, among others. Existing computer-based tools to support virtual assembly either concentrate solely on representation of the geometry of parts and fixtures and evaluation of clearances and tolerances or use simulated human mannequins to approximate human interaction in the assembly process. Virtual reality technology has the potential to support integration of natural human motions into the computer aided assembly planning environment (Ritchie et al. in Proc I MECH E Part B J Eng 213(5):461–474, 1999). This would allow evaluations of an assembler’s ability to manipulate and assemble parts and result in reduced time and cost for product design. This paper provides a review of the research in virtual assembly and categorizes the different approaches. Finally, critical requirements and directions for future research are presented.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=me_pubs

Virtual reality for assembly methods prototyping: a review

Augmented Reality in built environment: Classification and implications for future research

Background

This study aimed to describe the state of the art in surgical robotics for spinal interventions, a challenging problem for which robots can provide valuable assistance.



Methods

Multiple electronic databases were searched for articles published during the last 10 years (2002–2012). Results were refined by defined inclusion criteria.



Results

A total of 18 different robots were found. Among them, five are commercially available systems: one specifically designed for spinal surgery, one for percutaneous needle-based interventions, two are radiosurgical systems with reported applications on the spine and another is a commercial robot which has been experimentally tested on spinal surgery. The remaining projects are research prototypes which are still on validation stages.



Conclusions

A comprehensive state of the art is presented, showing that spinal robotic surgery is still at an early stage of development but with great potential for improvement. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

https://www.neurop.ru/pdfdoc/review-of-18-spine-robots.pdf

A review of surgical robots for spinal interventions.

The virtual reality for maintainability (Revima) VR system supports maintainability simulation in aeronautics. Within this project we have developed and integrated a haptic device, the large haptic interface for aeronautic maintainability (LHIfAM). We use this device to track hand movements and provide force feedback within the large geometric models that describe aircraft engines. The user movements are the same as those that occur when testing physical mock-ups. An integrated haptic device and VR system for testing aircraft engines reduces development costs and avoids the necessity of physical mock-ups formaintainability.

A large haptic device for aircraft engine maintainability

The planning of disassembly sequences requires the identification of the extraction trajectories of the different parts or assemblies. The failure to find these trajectories can make a planner fail to generate correct sequences or not evaluate potential solutions. In this paper, we analyze the disassembly path-planning problem, its relation to the general path-planning problem and the main differences between both of them, such as the lack of a target configuration. We present a modification of the rapid-growing random tree-based algorithm (RRT) that addresses these differences. RRTs are easily parallelized so we analyze two different parallelization methods using dual-core-based CPUs as well as the impact of the target selection probability of the algorithm in execution time. The method described is applied to several real-world and synthetic examples.

Parallel RRT-based path planning for selective disassembly planning

This paper describes a haptic system for maintainability simulation in aeronautics, called REVIMA (Virtual Reality for Maintainability). In this project a software-hardware tool is designed and built to realistically simulate assembly-disassembly operations. It also helps to perform accessibility, interference and maintainability analysis by using virtual reality techniques without physical mock-ups. The system gives the user a reliable and realistic response. In order to achieve these requirements, the device has a workspace similar to the size of a turbo-engine. In addition this workspace can be placed in different positions to study ergonomics aspects of the simulated tasks.

Description of a haptic system for virtual maintainability in aeronautics

This paper proposes a new real-time Augmented Reality based tool to help in disassembly for maintenance operations. This tool provides workers with augmented instructions to perform maintenance tasks more efficiently. Our prototype is a complete framework characterized by its capability to automatically generate all the necessary data from input based on untextured 3D triangle meshes, without requiring additional user intervention. An automatic offline stage extracts the basic geometric features. These are used during the online stage to compute the camera pose from a monocular image. Thus, we can handle the usual textureless 3D models used in industrial applications. A self-supplied and robust markerless tracking system that combines an edge tracker, a point based tracker and a 3D particle filter has also been designed to continuously update the camera pose. Our framework incorporates an automatic path-planning module. During the offline stage, the assembly/disassembly sequence is automatically deduced from the 3D model geometry. This information is used to generate the disassembly instructions for workers.

Diego Borro

Papers

A review of surgical robots for spinal interventions.

A large haptic device for aircraft engine maintainability

Parallel RRT-based path planning for selective disassembly planning

Description of a haptic system for virtual maintainability in aeronautics

Providing guidance for maintenance operations using automatic markerless Augmented Reality system