How Re-Using S1000D content supports Augmented Reality

For most of us, Augmented Reality (AR) is a chance to play around on mobile devices, to catch small creatures, or for our kids to send funny pictures to their friends.

It enables you to view interactive, reality-based information in a real-world environment. Overlaying this digital content gives you an in-situ perspective of the information (even if that information is just a giant panda chewing on bamboo in your backyard through Google 3D animals).

Yet AR is infinitely more powerful than this.

AR is regarded as the next stage of the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) revolution for connecting products, people, and service.

Aerospace & Defense organizations are adopting AR to improve service and maintenance of platforms. But if you are involved in the creation, management, and delivery of service information for these platforms, how do you get from where you are today to where you need to be to implement AR , and what are the real benefits?

In the Aerospace and Defense sector, manufacturers are developing complex products in relatively small volumes and the engineers supporting these systems are performing highly skilled and sporadic maintenance procedures.

Ideally, the platform will be serviced where it was manufactured, supported by teams that designed them in the first place. However, with the lifespan of naval vessels and fighter jets at around 30-40 years and their locations fluid, the teams supporting these systems often change multiple times.

Using service and maintenance instructions delivered by AR means users can be trained as they service the equipment in a 3-dimensional context using step-by-step guides. Visual instructions provided by AR give the user full confidence to the user that they are performing the task per the process set out by the manufacturer. And these visual guides remove the complication of understanding the instructions when English is not the user's first language.

By following the AR instructions, users can sign off each stage of the procedure or identify parts that need to be replaced without needing specific in-depth knowledge of the product or part. The results are improved first time fix rates, reduced repair time, and ultimately reduced total cost of servicing.

So technology has caught up and complex A&D platforms are perfect for adopting AR in service and maintenance procedures, but how do you implement AR?

To create a beneficial AR experience for maintainers, you need to feed it with an accurate flow of data from the CAD design right through to the critical service content.

In the A&D space, an increasing number of projects are requiring service content in the ASD S1000D standard. This means that all supporting information for systems such as seats, landing systems, and engines need to be S1000D compliant, putting this content in a common standard that can be shared industry wide.

In many organizations, engineering, service, and parts information is stored and managed on multiple systems. This separation reduces the quality and integrity of the S1000D service content, which then compromises or impairs any AR experiences created from it.

To address this gap, GPSL's S1000D for PTC Windchill maintains associativity between source CAD engineering data and parts and service content to accurately support products for the decades of use they will have in the field.

Having the relevant assembly instructions, spare parts lists, and service guides is essential when creating AR experiences. S1000D for PTC Windchill ensures the correct content is being used to generate these AR maintenance tasks.

By having these connected systems, you enable the Digital Thread and ensure efficient and reliable processes and in place to support your AR experiences.

The results of connecting systems in this way are far reaching.

• Better connected processes make it quicker and easier than ever before to create the S1000D service information needed for AR experiences
  
• Moving to visual instructions for maintenance tasks gives the user full confidence to the user that they are performing the task as per the process set out by the manufacturer.
  
• And ultimately, the cost of maintaining a platform and the platform downtime throughlife are reduced.

And it is not just the A&D sector that is recognizing the benefits of S1000D for AR, the rail industry is also onboard!

Engineers at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) are shining a light on the range of growing Industry 4.0 technology solutions that can unlock productivity, quality, and sustainability improvements for maintenance activities in rail.

AR is one of the stars of their smart-assisted maintenance demonstrator that uses S1000D data from PTC Windchill to deliver operator guidance, empowering those carrying out a maintenance task with up-to-date, in-situ information.

Arthur Kershaw, senior project engineer at the AMRC, says the technologies powering the demonstrator have potential to unlock big benefits for both smaller businesses and OEMs looking to advance their MRO capabilities and improve operational efficiencies.

Want to understand more about using S1000D content to support AR experiences?

You can read more about the AMRC Maintenance 4.0 cell here.

The Project uses PTC’s Vuforia software technology to underpin the AR experiences and GPSL's S1000D for PTC Windchill to manage and deliver the critical S1000D technical information.

For more information about the AMRC project please contact Aston Smith or get in touch with our team to talk through your specific requirements.

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