ShowMe

The enormous increase in the number of variants and complexity in industrial products leads inevitably to a cost explosion at the industrial assembly process: Because of the high number of variants the assembly tasks have to be carried out manually. For example, for engine assembly it takes up to a month until a worker can efficiently carry out the assembly. To counter this, “ShowMe” develops the future assembly workplace. The goal of ShowMe is to help the workers as efficiently as possible at what they are doing. To achieve this, ShowMe combines sensors, object recognition algorithms and metaheuristic optimization to allow a realtime-detection of the workpiece’s assembly state.

This automatic recognition allows for a variety of innovation, which are part of ShowMe:

• An inline-quality assurance continuously checks if there are deviations between the target/actual state of the parts, and shows the difference immediately. (“Zero-defect” production).

• The automatic state recognition enables a visualization of the next possible assembly tasks. This help leads to less mental stress which in turn leads to a lower number of mistakes.

• ShowMe can observe and analyze chosen assembly sequences, and can calculate new, optimized sequences and provide these calculations to the workers: the system learns from the workers, which leads to a continual improvement.

• Recognized assembly states are visualized in real time via Augmented Reality, which leads to an immediate quality feedback loop. The workers can immediately repair the problem.

By using ShowMe, the error rate for assembly rate drops, which leads to savings in follow-up processes. Simultaneously, the assembly process optimizes itself: the worker’s knowledge is aggregated and efficiently distributed, which leads to continuously improvements in efficiency and error reduction.

Project Name:
Integrated Installation Assistant in Engine Production

Funding:
FFG – 1. Ausschreibung Intelligente Produktion

Duration:
01.04.2012 – 31.03.2014