Wearable Technology
Assembly Line
๐งโ๐ญ๐ฆพ High-Tech Gloves Give Workers a Helping Hand
Waupaca Foundry Inc. is a leading supplier of iron castings to the automotive, commercial vehicle, agriculture, construction and industrial markets. Using state of-the-art technology, the company produces castings from gray iron, ductile iron, HNM series high-strength ductile iron, and austempered ductile iron. The company melts some 9,500 tons of metal daily.
To improve ergonomics, Waupaca Foundry is using an innovative adaptive technology to support workers who manually grind castings. The Ironhand glove, developed by a Swedish company Bioservo Technologies, is the worldโs first soft exoskeleton designed for the human hand to improve grip strength and reduce effort. The system was tested at the Waupacaโs Etowah casting finishing plant and Marinette ductile iron foundry.
The system consists of a glove covering all five fingers, and a power pack worn in a backpack or hip-pack. Pressure sensors within the glove trigger servomotors within the power unit and give the wearer a more powerful grip, which is easily adjusted for each application. The gloveโs โsoft extra muscleโ strengthening technology merges neuroscience, mechatronics and robotics, and increases worker endurance for manual assembly tasks.
Boeing Bionics Allow Teammates to Suit up for Safety
In Boeingโs commercial division, the exoskeleton vest is in use or planned for use as personal protective equipment in the 737, 767, 777 and 787 Dreamliner programs. Teams at a number of Boeing sites have tested the vest since 2018. It is rolling out as an innovative enterprise standard tool designed to lessen the pressure mechanics bear as they work repetitive jobs at chest level and above.
โWhen you activate the vest, itโs somewhere between 5 to 18 pounds (2 to 8 kilograms) offloaded from the wearer,โ said Dr. Christopher Reid, a Boeing engineer and Associate Technical Fellow who specializes in ergonomics and wearable technology. โIt reduces the stress on the shoulders and ultimately reduces injuries.โ
Optimized processes for machinery and equipment: How the industry uses Visual Assistance
Today, troubleshooting, machine acceptance, commissioning and training are established use cases for visual assistance in industrial companies, as also stressed by a recent survey of 39 VDMA member companies.
Machine operators benefit from visual and auditory guidance provided by one or more service experts during live support. A mapping of the field of view onto the machine via the user interface of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, or smart glasses, ensures simple and immediate virtual interaction. AR annotations, a continuous zoom or the possibility to transmit high-resolution images even with a bad internet connection are helpful features of oculavis SHARE. As smart tools for the expert within the video call they enable concrete instructions to technical staff, e.g., for repairs or in training situations.
Smart apparel that evaluates workers' physical workload
One of the biggest challenges faced by society in developed countries is an aging society due to a declining birth rate. What this means is that there is or will be a serious labor shortage both in terms of overall numbers as well as those with expertise or experience. To overcome this shortage, older people or foreign workers are being increasingly employed to fill the gap. At such sites, accidents or injuries due to unfamiliar work may occur. Thus, it is important to understand how the physical workload is being handled in order to ensure a healthy and safe work environment. In this blog, Iโd like to talk about the work that we are doing to quantitatively visualize strain and enable the most appropriate response based on the physical load.
In collaboration with Xenoma Inc., the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and its spin-off sci-track GmbH, Hitachi is pursuing the research and development of wearable AI technology that monitors workers physical load at all times in an effort to achieve solutions that improve worker safety and health in industrial fields.
This Factory Is Using AR To Help With A Hiring Crunch
One of the challenges associated with AR has been in trying to turn a complex physical process, such as wiring a component or working a machine, into code that could run on a headset. Taqtile CEO Dirck Schou said the companyโs software makes programming for AR glasses simple, and based on my conversation with Tim Lecrone and Beau Wileman of PBC, the software Taqtile developed is easy to use. Once PBC has created a module for training it pays for itself after 1.44 employees train with it according to Wileman.
The cobots help handle processes that are repetitive and free up people to take on different tasks. Given how tough it is to hire people to work in the factory, using them helps reduce the overall staffing load. But the biggest gains so far have been in training and getting employees quickly up to speed. Now PBC can hire a person and get them working on a machine in a few days as opposed to that taking up to six weeks. It also helps reduce the cost of training a cobot and staff. Wileman told me that an intern, which costs $17 an hour, can train a cobot or map out a process in less than four hours, while it might cost around $30,000 for an outside expert to manually train a cobot.
Introducing Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing
What makes the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing unique is our commitment to industry-specific standards and communities, such as the Open Manufacturing Platform, the OPC Foundation, and the Digital Twins Consortium, as well as the co-innovation with our rich ecosystem of partners.
On Factory Floors, a Chime and Flashing Light to Maintain Distance
Businesses like Henkel, a big German chemical company, are trying wearable sensors to prevent virus outbreaks among workers.