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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."
Until they start implanting happy thoughts and images into the system to keep the workers productive. "You love your job."
...When I was an undergraduate in CS at Columbia University (graduated in '93), the graphics guys were working on this.
:-(
It's nice that it's finally coming down the pipeline 10 years later. Makes me wish I was still on the inside instead of looking at all this stuff as an outsider.
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
Years ago, before multi-layer PC boards worked well, there was something called "semi-automated wire wrap". Production wire wrap involves wiring up big circuit boards with thousands of wires. Fully automated wire wrap machines were huge and expensive, and manual wire wrap tended to have too many errors. So "semi-automated wire wrap" was developed. Lights indicated the row and column where the wire was to be attached. The position of the hand-held wire wrap gun was monitored through a mechanical linkage, and if it was in the wrong place, pulling the trigger did nothing. Thus, when a wire was attached, it had to be in the right place.
The equipment for this was far simpler than the fully automated machine, so, using low-wage workers, it became a common way of building boards. It totally de-skills the job. In an hour, anyone can learn it.
With a declining percentage of older open-architecture cars in the nation's fleet, we will see a declining percentage of independent repair businesses.
I fix my own car.. which is the primary reason I have no interest in the new cars, which can't be fixed without infringing on the laws passed by those clowns under the styrofoam "vote hats" which parade around every few years, exhorting how it I elect them, they will "fight" for me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
In the car plant I work at (which will have to remain nameless) the workers learn how to build cars by trial and error.
When a new model comes they start by producing only one a day. The cars that result from the first months of production are so bad that they have to be repaired by experts in a special hall, sometimes taking several days for each car.
The first hundred or so cars are only used for presentations, road tests and crash tests anyway, so it's no big deal if they don't look perfect.
Unfortunately, by the time the car goes into full production most of the workers still don't know what they are doing, and it takes a few hundred defect cars in a row before anyone decide to do anything about the problem.
I guess a system like this would be ideal for the starting phase of production, to train up the workers. The only problem is that whoever sets up the system in the beginning would have to know how to build the car in the optimal way (including all variations). Usually nobody has this knowledge until after the fact.