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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."
Tank, I need to know how to fix a Lexus IS300, now!!!
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THE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!
Now if only these came with a bedroom module then maybe I'd know what to do when I found a girl in my bed.
I would be interested to see what in the way of technical writing and documentation goes into this sort of thing. It would force many technical writers to also focus on interface much more than they do now with standard Robohelp systems or other standard documentation.
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Until they start implanting happy thoughts and images into the system to keep the workers productive. "You love your job."
I cant what to see what happens when someone hacks into this system. I expect to see some cars reminiscent of my early childhood efforts with mecanno.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This day has been a long time in coming. In addition to reading books, I now spend much of my time listening to books, websites, etc., and I am not hearing impaired.
ATT's "NaturalVoices" technology (utilized by TextAloudMP3) is just exponentially better than the old Stephen Hawking voice, adds tone, inflection, etc., using grammatical clues, and makes even listening to Project Gutenberg's E-Texts of Charles Dickens Novels enjoyable.
The big productivity boost in this technology is that after a little bit of practice, you can listen to an unabridged text file probably 20 times faster than reading, especially as you do not have to stop while driving, jogging, etc...
I can't believe there hasn't been more industrial use of this technology.
I've tried to get the PG folks to promote this more as it would make the "market" for their E-Books much larger, but that is pretty much the opposite of their very basic approach to technology. (i.e. not wanting to release their texts in anything other than a plain old ASCII format because they want their texts as widely accessible as possible.)
...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'"
In this day and age Automotive companies are still using people to do manufacturing?
How barbaric.
Talk to most anyone who works on an assembly line and they will tell you that their job is as boring as hell. Some might say that they almost feel like a machine themselves.
Contrast this with a labourer who builds furniture from scratch or a shoemaker and you find yourself in a different situation. While their actions are the same, their efforts have tangible results. If they have their own business selling what they've created the satisfaction runs deeper.
How are goggles shining lights in your face saying "Unscrew this next" going to make you feel any closer to the work that you're doing? It just seems like another level of detachment to me.
Why did the article discuss hardware problems but not social problems regarding the goggles?
Mind you, from a Slashdot geek perspective, the goggles are a cool idea, but I don't feel envious of the people who are going to have to use these things on an assembly line.
Sure its definately cool, but its scary too. Imagine directions being constantly spoken into your ear as you perform your job.
Human beings are not efficent organisms, neither in chemistry or psychology. You can't expect a human to act like a machine, something has got to give.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
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
I look at a crowd of women and it gives me stats and percentage success rate with different "targets".
I then talk to her and up pops up witty and appropate comments.
I then start making out with her and then I get a Blue Screen of Death/Seg Fault.
"Excuse babe, I need to Google something."
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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/
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.
It makes me wonder, when this technology is going to enter the field of medicine? I don't think I am ready for a physician with a Dell box strapped to his head..
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
I can see a REALLY big problem with this approach, that will probably be difficult to properly instruct for, and that is inconsistencies, errors, and dangerous situations that could crop up, and the technician in question (though if they keep dumbing down the instruction, "technician" might no longer apply) might not be able to tell what is wrong or how severe it is.
Remember, for problems, textbooks usually have fairly lengthy descriptions of types of failures and things to look for, with some representative pictures, but predominately with descriptions. Descriptions allow for describing a blanket set of bad circumstances without having to show one specific circumstance, so the technician could fairly easily connect the condition of a part or assembly to the verbage that was in the textbook. In picture instruction, if the picture of the type of error doesn't look close enough to the actual error, the technician might not realise the severity of the problem, because it was never covered under the training video. Rather than being taught the theory behind what is occuring, (s)he is being taught the specific, one case implementation.
I'm not against training videos, but I believe strongly in training with more than just their use. Hands on training, as well as textbook training for theory offer a much more well-rounded way to learn, especially if the person being trained is going to be performing the same basic job for a long time on many different yet similar machines or models. Once the initial education has been bestowed, freshening of education for a newer model would be almost trivial.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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"
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.
That's... horrible. Efficent, economical and innovative. But horrible--you remove every bit of skill, creativity, and inititive ( I know, I know, not much to begin with ) and make people into meat robots. The real problem is, people will start expecting workers to *be* like robots. No training, no intro, just stick a pair of glasses on them and tell them what bolts to turn. If they slack a little, well the glasses will probably beep at them and alert payroll. You're naive if you don't believe that isn't one of the advertised benifits. I can see a day when people will be fired for putting in four screws in counter-clockwise when the labled instructions told them to do it clockwise.
Back in '95, working for a DoD contractor, I saw a demo of some augmented reality gear being proposed for equipment troubleshooting and maintenance applications. The goggles were the same material used in head-up displays, coupled with an earpiece/microphone/camera in the headgear.
The microphone provided input for possibly the best voice input setup I've ever seen to date, in that it actually recognized a user saying things like, "yeah, uh-huh" and similar grunt/groan acknowledgements. The goggles were linked to a rather cool pattern recognition system. A small status bar in the side of the display provided a couple of icons to let the user know they were on the right track, a smiley/mr. yuck set of icons provided a status as to system "lock" status (or not).
The major downside to all this was the hardware in '95 to support all this was rather intensive. I recall 3-4 towers, plus a custom-built rather hefty cube-shaped box (no, not a next cube) that handled all the pattern-recognition processing and voice input. Oh, and the hefty wiring to the headgear.
Other than that, pretty darn cool back in '95...
I could see where statistics, maintained by the system, would organize down to the very last microcent which employee was more productive than another. Given training will be no longer required, the employee can be ranked as easily as a solenoid valve, and replaced just as easily.
This is great news for the businessman, who will undoubtedly lobby ( and win ) any changes to employment law to maximize his profit, just as many IP/Copyright holders are doing now.
This is sad news indeed for the laborer. I guess his prime function in life is just to reproduce and make more laborers.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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]
Your working habbits will adapt to service us.
Resistance is feutile.
Spell checkking is futile.
Preppare to surrender your dictonaries.
Note that you could implement a clever hack job that would make all the employees fabricate say.. a giant lexus-branded steel penis. Since they've been reduced to following step by step operating codes, this taking over of worker directives would probably not be noticed until the very end. Likewise, corporate espionage could in the future consist of stealing the proper meme-program (obligatory ref: snow crash) to whatever missle tech is currently trendy. This is a consequence of further removing the worker from the means of production.
The real application for these is an on-demand assembly line to replace a multitude of expensive single product lines that probably don't need to run all the time.
Picture an automotive assembly line that has 300 assembly stations, each one of which gets the "next part" supplied by a chain driven conveyer bringing it to the station on a hook.
Jane, who takes care of placing and tightening down the intake manifold on the engine block in front of her, no longer has to either think about what torque to use, what bolt pattern, or really, anything. Follow the instructions, tighten the bolts per the visual overlay pattern at the designated torque, and on to the next block coming down the line and intake manifold coming off the parts conveyer belt.
The ultimate end of this is much like the Microsoft commercial where the guy in the showroom is picking whether he wants a black car or a red car, and the manufacturing plant is responding almost instantly. Now extend this to not beginning the production on a car until an order is placed, and it'll be ready that day for delivery to the customer's city.
And yes, this reduces Jane to a non-thinking bio-machine for the assembly line. That's the really awful part of this process.
Cast in the Name of Efficiency, Ye Not Cognizant.
Big Ugh.
Boeing in St. Louis (military fighter division) uses goggle technology for several manufacturing processes. One example is when making wiring harnesses for aircraft. The wiring harnesses are very complex and can span over 100 feet. They used to have specific pattern boards for every different harness with pegs to support the wires and drawings to follow right on the boards. Now, they use a generic board with a grid of supports and they put a pair of goggles on that superimposes the wiring diagram on the board so that they can manufacture the harness of the day.
I believe they have also applied this technology to the maintenance task to the degree that someone at a remote site can put on a pair of the goggles and be guided by visual highlighting superimposed over the aircraft parts to a task. They may also access schematics that do not superimpose and listen to guidance through the same networked device as they perform their task.
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]
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.
I don't understand the point of this. If you are having to program a goggle interface complex enough to recognize the screws from any nearby position and have it mark every last step, why not just put a robot arm on it instead of putting a person there? If you are mechaniziing the decision making and visual recognition, the only thing left - arm movement, is cake.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
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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