Augmented Reality To Help Mechanics Fix Vehicles

kkleiner writes "ARMAR, or Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair, is a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist you in making repairs. An Android phone provides an interface to control the graphics you view during the process. Published in IEEE, and recently tested with the United States Marine Corps on an armored turret, ARMAR can cut maintenance times in half by guiding users to the damaged area and displaying 3D animations to demonstrate the appropriate tools and techniques."

Comments

locating parts on vehicle

[pig_man1899]

How do I use this thing to locate the muffler bearings my service shop says need replacing?

Re:locating parts on vehicle

[Anonymous Coward]

Muffler bearings? Hell, you should see what I get charged for piston return springs every oil change!

Re:locating parts on vehicle

[Pojut]

Why, the same way you would use it to check your blinker fluid level!

Re:locating parts on vehicle

[MadShark]

I once got a friend of mine to believe there was such a thing as blinker fluid. It just so happened that another friend had his car parked outside with a cracked tail light. It had rained heavily earlier that day and water had leaked in and filled the blinker right up to where the lens was cracked. She was calling bullshit until we took her outside and showed her. She bought it hook, line and sinker after seeing it. We caught hell later, but it was a lot of fun.

will it be like other AR?

[girlintraining]

Cut approaching.
Cut approaching.
Cut here.
Cut here.
You have cut the wrong wire.
Recalculating...
Recalculating...
Get soldering iron.

Re:Another dealer profit center.

[Anonymous Coward]

"hose fitting disconnect kit"

aka a knife :)

Re:Hello

[frosty_tsm]

welcome to Windows Mechanical, I see you have picked up a wrench, please wait while Microsoft Clippy WrenchBuddy .NET SP 6 is downloaded.

Not quite. They used the Android to power it, so it'd be closer to:

[Repair] [I'm Feeling Lucky]

Re:Some Thoughts

[c6gunner]

I know - which is actually quite confusing. They can make a smartphone Less than 2 inches thick, and it has a camera and screen built into it, what makes this headset so special?

It's a military requirement - every gizmo has to be 10 times as big as the civilian equivalent, must weigh at least 5 times as much, and must look like something out of an 80's sci-fi movie. If you can bundle that with a really clumsy and unresponsive interface, you're pretty much guaranteed military customers. 5 years ago I had the option of using a military GPS - which was about half the size of a phone-book, and lost the signal every time it rained - or buying a civilian version which could fit in my shirt pocket and worked pretty much everywhere. Guess which one I went with :)

The other (more serious) reason is that it's clearly an early model. Research-in-progress is usually a bunch of commercial components wired up in an ad-hoc manner. If they ever get a market-ready version, I'd imagine it would be a lot smaller.

Re:So much for A+

[mhajicek]

Operator, I need a repair program for a B-212 helicopter.

Perfect brain for jarheads!

[HigH5]

I can imagine this will end up in "Shoot the enemy here or here to kill him." Also available in spanish.