Browsing by Author "Palmarini, Riccardo"
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Item Open Access Authoring digital contents for augmented reality in maintenance.(2018-04) Palmarini, Riccardo; Erkoyuncu, John Ahmet; Roy, RajkumarTechnicians’ performance is a major driver in maintenance and each process can be prone to time and quality variances as well as errors due to factors such as experience, complexity and environment. Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines and has been demonstrated to have a role with improving efficiency, effectiveness and decision-making within industrial maintenance. AR has not reached its full potential yet and its implementation in Industry is slowed down by three main limitations: hardware restricted capabilities, object recognition robustness and contents-related issues. This PhD project focuses on easing the implementation of AR by overcoming the AR technology selection challenges and the AR contents-related issues. In order to reach the aim, the student has provided three main contributions to knowledge: 1) a process to select AR technology for maintenance (IPSAR), 2) a method for creating AR step-by-step procedures (FARP) and 3) a method for providing remote assistance (ARRA). FARP and ARRA methods have been developed and tested. The first allows recording procedures in an ad-hoc designed “AR-format” and is able to show “step-by-step” procedures. It aims to support deskilling the maintenance process and reducing the error rate by simplifying the delivery of maintenance with efficient and effective guidance. The second overcomes current remote video-call assistance limitations by improving spatial referencing. ARRA module allows to provide AR-assistance by overlaying virtual objects on the real environment of a remote maintainer. The methods proposed by the student could boost the implementation of AR and open the doors for a bright future in which AR supports technicians thus reducing operational costs and training and improving human performances.Item Open Access Data: Fast Augmented Reality Authoring: Fast Creation of AR step-by-step Procedures for Maintenance Operations(Cranfield University, 2023-08-14 14:15) Palmarini, Riccardo; Fernandez Del Amo Blanco, Inigo; Ariansyah, Dedy; Khan, Samir; ahmet Erkoyuncu, John; Roy, RajkumarAugmented Reality (AR) has shown great potential for improving human performance in Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) operations. Whilst most studies are currently being carried out at an academic level, the research is still in its infancy due to limitations in three main aspects: limited hardware capabilities, the robustness of object recognition, and content-related issues. This article focuses on the last point, by proposing a new geometry-based method for creating a step-by-step AR procedure for maintenance activities. The Fast Augmented Reality Authoring (FARA) method assumes that AR can recognise and track all the objects in a maintenance environment when CAD models are available, to knowledge transfer to a non-expert maintainer. The novelty here lies in the fact that FARA is a human-centric method for authoring animation-based procedures with minimal programming skills and the manual effort required. FARA has been demonstrated, as a software unit, in an AR system composed of commercially available solutions and tested with over 30 participants. The results show an average time saving of 34.7% (min 24.7%; max 55.3%) and an error reduction of 68.6% when compared to the utilisation of traditional hard-copy manuals. Comparisons are also drawn from performances of similar AR applications to illustrate the benefits of procedures created utilising FARA.Item Open Access Designing an AR interface to improve trust in Human-Robots collaboration(Elsevier, 2018-05-21) Palmarini, Riccardo; Fernández del Amo, Iñigo; Bertolino, Guglielmo; Dini, Gino; Erkoyuncu, John Ahmet; Roy, Rajkumar; Farnsworth, MichaelIn a global, e-commerce marketplace, product customisation is driven towards manufacturing flexibility. Conventional caged robots are designed for high volume and low mix production cannot always comply with the increasing low volume and high customisation requirements. In this scenario, the interest in collaborative robots is growing. A critical aspect of Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is human trust in robots. This research focuses on increasing the human confidence and trust in robots by designing an Augmented Reality (AR) interface for HRC. The variable affecting the trust involved in HRC have been estimated. These have been utilised for designing the AR-HRC. The proposed design aims to provide situational awareness and spatial dialog. The AR-HRC developed has been tested on 15 participants which have performed a “pick-and-place” task. The results show that the utilisation of AR in the proposed scenario positively affects the human trust in robot. The human-robot collaboration enhanced by AR are more natural and effective. The trust has been measured through an empirical psychometric method also presented in this paper.Item Open Access An Innovative Process to Select Augmented Reality (AR) Technology for Maintenance(Elsevier, 2017-03-02) Palmarini, Riccardo; Erkoyuncu, John Ahmet; Roy, RajkumarAugmented Reality (AR) technology for maintenance aims to improve human performances by providing relevant information regarding both corrective and preventive maintenance. The development of an AR system involves the choice of a hardware, a development software and a visualisation method. These selections are challenging due to the wide choice of services and options available which result in fragmentation: different development processes and different user experiences. In order to ease the selection of an AR system for supporting maintenance operations, this paper proposes an innovative process. It guides the reader to identify the requirements and the constraints for any specific application through a number of questions developed in this study to help with the selection. This results in suggestions for the selection of the hardware, the development software and the visualisation method. The process is built based on a literature study, grey documents and experts interviews. Future works includes the validation of the selection process proposed in this project. It could be done by comparing the choices made using the proposed process with the choices made by experts for the same case study. Moreover, the decisional process could be extended to face the economical and ergonomics aspects related with the selection of an AR system. It could be done expanding the literature research including studies which investigate into the economical and ergonomics consequences of the application or AR for maintenance. Paper presented at The 5th International Conference on Through-life Engineering Services (TESConf 2016)Item Open Access An innovative user-centred support tool for Augmented Reality maintenance systems design: a preliminary study(Elsevier, 2018-05-21) Fernández del Amo, Iñigo; Galeotti, Elisa; Palmarini, Riccardo; Dini, Gino; Erkoyuncu, John Ahmet; Roy, RajkumarAugmented Reality (AR) technologies in maintenance are demonstrated to positively impact on technicians’ work and performance. Current research in this area is mainly focused on solving technical challenges related with AR in industrial environments. Limited attention has been put into the user perception, ergonomics and usability aspects of AR systems design. This paper proposes an innovative user-centred design support tool for AR systems in maintenance contexts. The tool is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is a well-established multi-criteria decision-making approach. In this research, AHP is utilised for guiding designers in the evaluation of application-contexts and AR-technologies for selecting the most suitable and effective AR interaction solution. The tool’s validation has been conducted with twelve maintenance-experts in a design workshop using two case studies. The quantitative results obtained in both case studies reveal the applicability of the AHP model, as well as the effectiveness of the design support tool for complex decisions in AR for maintenance. The use of AHP methods for AR design enable experts to deal with complex and contrasting concepts and express a preference among them with a subjective judgement based on their personal understanding of the problem. Therefore, simplifying the design of AR systems for complex maintenance contexts.Item Open Access A systematic review of augmented reality applications in maintenance(Elsevier, 2017-07-11) Palmarini, Riccardo; Erkoyuncu, John Ahmet; Roy, Rajkumar; Torabmostaedi, HoseinAugmented 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.Item Open Access A systematic review of Augmented Reality content-related techniques for knowledge transfer in maintenance applications(Elsevier, 2018-09-27) Fernández del Amo, Iñigo; Erkoyuncu, John Ahmet; Roy, Rajkumar; Palmarini, Riccardo; Onoufriou, DemetriusAugmented Reality (AR) has experienced an increasing trend in applied research in the last few years. This emerging trend is focused in content-related challenges: mainly creation (Authoring), adaptation (Context-Awareness) and improvement (Interaction-Analysis) of augmented content. Research in these techniques has enabled Academia to recognise Augmented Reality capability for knowledge transfer, either from AR systems to users or between users. But to the best of author’s knowledge, there are no specific literature review in these areas, neither on their relations with AR knowledge transfer ability. Therefore, this paper aims to identify these relations through an analysis of state-of-the-art techniques in Authoring (A), Context-Awareness (CA) and Interaction-Analysis (IA) in the context of maintenance applications. In order to do so, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been conducted on 74 application-relevant papers from 2012 to 2017. It comprised a thematic analysis to establish the relation between maintenance applications, research in A, CA and IA and AR knowledge transfer modes. Its results helped to classify AR maintenance-applications by technological readiness levels. They also revealed the potential of AR for users’ knowledge capture, and future research required for full knowledge management capabilities. Furthermore, the SLR method proposed could be extended to correlate AR systems and applications by their knowledge management capabilities in any AR application context.