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Operator 4.0: Industrial Augmented Reality, Interfaces and Ergonomics
Full text linkIl programma Industry 4.0, in Germania, e le corrispondenti iniziative internazionali continueranno a trasformare la forza e l’ambiente di lavoro nell’industria fino al 2025.
Parallelamente all'evoluzione del settore, la storia dell'interazione dell’operatori con le varie tecnologie di produzione industriale e digitale può essere riassunta come un'evoluzione generazionale verso la generazione dell’Operatore 4.0.
Questo lavoro di tesi mira ad applicare le tecnologie abilitanti di Industry 4.0 per progettare e sviluppare, metodi e applicazioni a supporto della figura di Operator 4.0 rispetto a tre delle sue otto sfaccettature: l'Augmented Operator, il Virtual Operator e l'Healthy Operator.
Nel Capitolo 1, presentiamo le ricerche svolte nel campo Industrial Augmented Reality. Descriviamo la tecnologia della Realtà Aumentata (AR) e la sua applicazione nel campo della Realtà Aumentata Industriale (IAR). Nel capitolo 2 presentiamo un prototipo di banco di lavoro badato su Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) progettato nelle prime fasi di questa ricerca e descriviamo gli esperimenti effettuati per convalidare la sua efficienza come supporto per Operator 4.0.
Nel Capitolo 3 descriviamo gli esperimenti effettuati per ottimizzare la leggibilità del testo mostrato nelle interfacce AR per Optical See-Through Displays. In questa ricerca, proponiamo nuovi indici estratti dalle immagini di background, visualizzati su uno schermo LCD, e li confrontiamo con quelli proposti in letteratura attraverso un test utente specifico.
Nel Capitolo 4 presentiamo un framework AR per dispositivi palmari che aiuta gli utenti nella comprensione delle informazioni sugli impianti descritte tradizionalmente attraverso i Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P & ID) su supporto cartaceo.
Nel Capitolo 5 descriviamo la ricerca svolta nel campo delle Human Machine Interfaces relativa all'uso delle interfacce utente naturali in realtà virtuale. Abbiamo progettato e sviluppato un'interfaccia gestuale per la navigazione di tour virtuali costituiti da immagini sferiche. Abbiamo confrontato l'interfaccia sviluppata con una classica controllata da mouse per valutare l'efficacia di tale interfaccia in termini di accettazione e coinvolgimento degli utenti.
Nel Capitolo 6, descriviamo un framework generale per la progettazione di un vocabolario di gesti per la navigazione delle istruzioni tecniche nei manuali digitali per le operazioni di manutenzione. Viene anche proposta e utilizzata una procedura di validazione per confrontare i vocabolari gestuali in termini di fatica e carico cognitivo.
Nel Capitolo 7, trattiamo l'aspetto dell’Healthy Operator. Descriviamo la progettazione e lo sviluppo di uno strumento software semi-automatico in grado di monitorare l'ergonomia dell'operatore nell’ambiente di lavoro valutando la metrica Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). Descriviamo il design e lo sviluppo del nostro prototipo software, il K2RULA, basato su un sensore a basso costo, il Microsoft Kinect v2. Successivamente, convalidiamo il nostro strumento con due esperimenti. Nel primo, lo confrontiamo con un sistema di tracking ottico, il golden standard di settore. Nel secondo confrontiamo i risultati restituiti dal prototipo con quelli calcolati da un valutatore esperto.
Infine, traiamo le nostre conclusioni sul lavoro svolto e cerchiamo di tracciare un percorso per lo sviluppo futuro delle nostre ricerche.The German program Industry 4.0 and the corresponding international initiatives will continue to transform the industrial workforce and their work environment through 2025.
In parallel with the evolution of the industry, the history of the interaction of operators with various industrial and digital production technologies can be summarized as a generational evolution towards the Operator 4.0 generation.
This work aims at applying the enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 in order to design and develop, methods and applications supporting the figure of the Operator 4.0 with respect three out of her/his eight facets – the Augmented Operator, the Virtual Operator, and the Healthy Operator.
In Chapter 1, we introduce the researches carried out in the IAR field. We describe the Augmented Reality (AR) technology and its application in the field of the Industrial Augmented Reality (IAR). In chapter 2, we present a Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) workbench prototype designed in the early stage of this research and we describe the experiments carried out to validate its efficiency as support to the Operator 4.0.
In Chapter 3, we describe the experiments carried out to optimize legibility of text shown in AR interfaces for optical see-through displays. In this research, we propose novel indices extracted from the background images, displayed on an LCD screen, and we compare them with those proposed in the literature by designing a specific user test.
In Chapter 4, we present an AR framework for handheld devices that enhance users in the comprehension of plant information traditionally conveyed through printed Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID).
In Chapter 5 we describe the research carried out in the field of HMI related to the use of Natural User Interfaces in Virtual Reality. We designed and developed a gesture interface for navigation of virtual tours made-up of spherical images. We compared the developed interface with a classical mouse-controlled one to evaluate the effectiveness of such an interface in terms of user acceptance and user engagement.
In Chapter 6, we describe a general framework to design a mid-air gesture vocabulary for the navigation of technical instructions in digital manuals for maintenance operations. A validation procedure is also proposed and utilized to compare gesture vocabularies in terms of fatigue and cognitive load.
In Chapter 7, we treat the facet of the Healthy Operator. We describe the design and development of a semi-automatic software tool able at monitoring the operator ergonomics in the shop floor by assessing Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) metrics. We describe the design and development of our software prototype – the K2RULA - based on a low- cost sensor, the Microsoft Kinect v2 depth-camera. Subsequently, we validate our tool with two experiments. In the first one, we compared the K2RULA grand-scores with those obtained with a reference optical motion capture system. In the second experiment, we evaluate the agreement of the grand-scores returned by the proposed application with those obtained by a RULA expert rater.
Finally, we draw our conclusions regarding the work carried out and try to map out a path for the future development of our researches in these fields
Design of a Mixed Reality Application for STEM Distance Education Laboratories
Full text linkIn this work, we propose a Mixed Reality (MR) application to support laboratory lectures in STEM distance education. It was designed following a methodology extendable to diverse STEM laboratory lectures. We formulated this methodology considering the main issues found in the literature that limit MR’s use in education. Thus, the main design features of the resulting MR application are students’ and teachers’ involvement, use of not distracting graphics, integration of traditional didactic material, and easy scalability to new learning activities. In this work, we present how we applied the design methodology and used the framework for the case study of an engineering course to support students in understanding drawings of complex machines without being physically in the laboratory. We finally evaluated the usability and cognitive load of the implemented MR application through two user studies, involving, respectively, 48 and 36 students. The results reveal that the usability of our application is “excellent” (mean SUS score 84.7), and it is not influenced by familiarity with Mixed Reality and distance education tools. Furthermore, the cognitive load is medium (mean NASA TLX score below 29) for all four learning tasks that students can accomplish through the MR application
Predicting Text Legibility over Textured Digital Backgrounds for a Monocular Optical See-Through Display
No full textText legibility in augmented reality with optical see-through displays can be challenging due to the interaction with the texture on the background. Literature presents several approaches to predict legibility of text superimposed over a specific image, but their validation with an AR display and with images taken from the industrial domain is scarce. In this work, we propose novel indices extracted from the background images, displayed on an LCD screen, and we compare them with those proposed in literature designing a specific user test. We collected the legibility user ratings by displaying white text over 13 industrial background images to 19 subjects using an optical see-through head-worn display. We found that most of the proposed indices have a significant correlation with user ratings. The main result of this work is that some of the novel indices proposed had a better correlation than those used before in the literature to predict legibility. Our results prove that industrial AR developers can effectively predict text legibility by simply running image analysis on the background image.</jats:p
Real time RULA assessment using Kinect v2 sensor
Full text linkThe evaluation of the exposure to risk factors in workplaces and their subsequent redesign represent one of the practices to lessen the frequency of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. In this paper we present K2RULA, a semi-automatic RULA evaluation software based on the Microsoft Kinect v2 depth camera, aimed at detecting awkward postures in real time, but also in off-line analysis. We validated our tool with two experiments. In the first one, we compared the K2RULA grand-scores with those obtained with a reference optical motion capture system and we found a statistical perfect match according to the Landis and Koch scale (proportion agreement index = 0.97, k = 0.87). In the second experiment, we evaluated the agreement of the grand-scores returned by the proposed application with those obtained by a RULA expert rater, finding again a statistical perfect match (proportion agreement index = 0.96, k = 0.84), whereas a commercial software based on Kinect v1 sensor showed a lower agreement (proportion agreement index = 0.82, k = 0.34)
ErgoTakt: A novel approach of human-centered balancing of manual assembly lines
Full text linkAlthough the increasing use of automation in industry, manual assembly stations are still common and, in some situations, even inevitable. Current practice in manual assembly lines is to balance them using the takt-time of each workstation and harmonize it. However, this approach mostly does not include ergonomic aspects and thus it may lead to workforce musculoskeletal disorders, extended leaves, and demotivation. This paper presents a holistic human-centric optimization method for line balancing using a novel indicator the ErgoTakt. ErgoTakt improves the legacy takt-time and helps to find an optimum between the ergonomic evaluation of an assembly station and its balance in time. The authors used a custom version of the ErgoSentinel Software and a Microsoft Kinect depth camera to perform online and real-time ergonomic assessment. An optimization algorithm is developed to find the best-fitting solution by minimizing a function of the ergonomic RULA-value and the cycle time of each assembly workstation with respect to the worker's ability. The paper presents the concept, the system-setup and preliminary evaluation of an assembly scenario. The results demonstrate that the new approach is feasible and able to optimize an entire manual assembly process chain in terms of both, economic aspects of a well-balanced production line as well as the ergonomic issue of long term human healthy work
Towards gestured-based technologies for human-centred Smart Factories
No full textDespite the increasing degree of automation in industry, manual or semi-automated are commonly and inevitable for complex assembly tasks. The transformation to smart processes in manufacturing leads to a higher deployment of data-driven approaches to support the worker. Upcoming technologies in this context are oftentimes based on the gesture-recognition, - monitoring or - control. This contribution systematically reviews gesture or motion capturing technologies and the utilization of gesture data in the ergonomic assessment, gesture-based robot control strategies as well as the identification of COVID-19 symptoms. Subsequently, two applications are presented in detail. First, a holistic human-centric optimization method for line-balancing using a novel indicator - ErgoTakt - derived by motion capturing. ErgoTakt improves the legacy takt-time and helps to find an optimum between the ergonomic evaluation of an assembly station and the takt-time balancing. An optimization algorithm is developed to find the best-fitting solution by minimizing a function of the ergonomic RULA-score and the cycle time of each assembly workstation with respect to the workers' ability. The second application is gesture-based robot-control. A cloud-based approach utilizing a generally accessible hand-tracking model embedded in a low-code IoT programming environment is shown
A User-Centered Framework for Designing Midair Gesture Interfaces
Full text linkDue to the recent advances in technologies for gesture recognition, midair gestures can be considered the interface of the future in a large number of applications. However, designing effective interfaces with midair gestures is not an easy task because the design is application dependent and it must fulfill many requirements at the same time. Despite the availability of general guidelines in the literature, clear and well-established procedures for the optimal design of midair gesture-based interfaces are, to date, not available and remain an open issue. The main contribution of this paper is a user-centered modular framework, which integrates existing and novel methods. It supports the designer considering multiple aspects including ergonomics, memorability, and specific user requirements tailored to the application scenario. The framework involves three design steps and a final validation step, also supported by dedicated software. We tested with success the proposed framework in an industrial case study, where technicians must easily access technical information by browsing digital manuals during maintenance operations
Mechanobiological Approach to Design and Optimize Bone Tissue Scaffolds 3D Printed with Fused Deposition Modeling: A Feasibility Study
Full text linkIn spite of the rather large use of the fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique for the fabrication of scaffolds, no studies are reported in the literature that optimize the geometry of such scaffold types based on mechanobiological criteria. We implemented a mechanobiology-based optimization algorithm to determine the optimal distance between the strands in cylindrical scaffolds subjected to compression. The optimized scaffolds were then 3D printed with the FDM technique and successively measured. We found that the difference between the optimized distances and the average measured ones never exceeded 8.27% of the optimized distance. However, we found that large fabrication errors are made on the filament diameter when the filament diameter to be realized differs significantly with respect to the diameter of the nozzle utilized for the extrusion. This feasibility study demonstrated that the FDM technique is suitable to build accurate scaffold samples only in the cases where the strand diameter is close to the nozzle diameter. Conversely, when a large difference exists, large fabrication errors can be committed on the diameter of the filaments. In general, the scaffolds realized with the FDM technique were predicted to stimulate the formation of amounts of bone smaller than those that can be obtained with other regular beam-based scaffolds
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