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"Augmented Reality" For the Assembly Line
silkySlim writes "EETimes has a short article about a combination data goggles and earpiece device to replace big manuals and reduce training time for assembly line workers. 'In one possible scenario, a technician with data goggles bends over the engine block of a luxury car and removes the covering. He is receiving instructions through an ear piece telling him what to do next while his data goggles mark the screws and bolts on which he must next place his tool.' Apparently, it's already in use by several automotive companies. There's some additional papers also available."
I tried one of the AR displays a few months back. The main reason why I thought that particular model was unsuitable for prolonged use, was that the text and other information appeared at a different depth from the object I was observing. The AR information was displayed at a fixed "infinite" depth.This made it impossible to focus on both the text and object at the same time, requiring me to adjust my eye focus everytime I wanted to read something. This constant refocussing caused a good amount of discomfort.
Adjusting the depth of the text to make sure it is exactly superimposed on the object that is being viewed is quite challenging, especially when the viewer moves his line of sight frequently.
An alternate design that some people find easier to adjust to uses a display mounted on a single eye (with the RW showing up in a dimmed background). I haven't tried these, but supposedly they are easier to get used to.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The four biggest problems with extensive adoption of this idea are:
1. Safety and Liability. I can just imagine a bug telling the new assembly line "cyber drone" to drill a hole 1 foot to the left when it meant one inch (shades of Nigel Tuefnel!), and the resulting explosion when he drills into the fuel tank. That, and the possibility of anyone who screws up telling his supervisor "Hey, that's what the Magic Smart Goggles told me to do!"
2. Cost. Technical writers are comparatively cheap [and easy to lay off, he noted bitterly]. Programmers are expensive. If the new Mark 2 Framistan has holes in a different places, that's five minutes of work tops to put the new information in existing manuals, but a day to write the code, debug it, and test the magic googles to make sure they're acurately pointing out the new framistan holes rather than the old ones.
3. Limited Applicability to Modern Manufacturing. A good portion of the most repetative assembly line jobs have already moved overseas. Many of the mechanical assembly jobs left don't require one worker doing the same thing 100 times, but doing 100 different things on a far more complex tool (i.e., the difference between assembling a toaster and assembling, say, an Ion Implanter). Optimizing "Enhanced Reality" for one task performed 100 times a day may be cost effective, but not for programming and training the system for hundreds of tasks.
4. The Awesome Power of Human Stupidity. Everytime they make something idiot proof, nature has shown the amzing ability to come up with a better idiot.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This article is rather bland and trite in comparison to Scientific American's article that goes into a greater depth about the value of AR in the future (April 2002).
The comments so far have been asking whether or not assembly workers actually need the AR. I would say many don't, however, as manufacturing becomes more and more automated, the actual jobs of the workers/repairmen on the line will probably increase in complexity leading to an excellent use of AR.
EETimes doesn't even mention the possiblity of gaming with AR. Check out the sciam link to see more about gaming with AR.
-Brad
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
Why are you modded as troll? Here is the explanation:
1. You are trying to sound Insightful but have deliberately made meaningless statements. Such as saying that you now listen to many websites and books, and you are not hearing impaired. That makes no sense, only a visually-impaired person would be the typical user of speech accessibility functions.
2. Voice is absolutely in no possible way 20 times faster than reading. Unless you have to sound out each word in your mind as you read, many people can read several pages per minute. And these aren't the "speedreaders" you hear about all the time. Try this little experiment: grab a novel and read it, silently. Then read the same novel aloud. Which will take longer?
The reason text messaging and email is preferred above telephone conversations (for those who have internet access) is that it's actually much faster. You can read the contents of an email in 15 seconds, which would have taken the person five minutes to say.
There are real health problems acossiated with this technology : A CAVE (yeah, a room filled with VERY big screens, often used by oil and automobile companies to display 3D graphics) will disturb your visual balance/depth, enough to impair your driving. In Norway you have restrictions on your driving after too much time inside a CAVE.
A day in front of a lousy monitor gives you less of a headache than a day of using even expensive, high-quality googles.
Technology like this is, like any other fancy GUI, has it's place, when used in an appropiate manner with well designed applications.
Micro Optical Corporation
These use the heads-up overlay display technology.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
The other method is active focus which bounces an infrared beam off the object and measures the distance.
Neither is perfect, but in a controlled manufacturing setting it would be easy to create 'focus points' on objects which would allow the system to focus the right distance. Heck, with that you could probably build the system to focus specifically on the correct part, further eliminating confusion.
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