How re-using S1000D content supports Augmented Reality

Let’s be honest, for most of us, Augmented Reality (AR) is a chance to play around on our 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 the viewer an in-situ perspective of the information.

Yet AR is much more than games. This technology 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. Platforms may have up to a 50-year lifespan. With those in-service to support AND requirements for new S1000D compliant service information, how do you get from where you are today to where you need to be to implement AR , and what are the real benefits?

Paper based instructions are a world staple for providing guidance on how to build furniture, replace ink cartridges, or use over complex household appliances. With the use of these devices generally taking place at home, there is no need to change this established method.

In the Aerospace and Defense sector, however, manufacturers are developing the world’s most complex products, and in small volumes. The engineers supporting these systems are performing highly skilled and sporadic maintenance procedures. With the lifespan of naval vessels and fighter jets at around 30-40 years, the people supporting these systems will also change multiple times.

Some maintenance checks will take place every week; however, there are tasks that only need to take place every couple of years. Ideally, the vessel, plane, or land system will be serviced where it was manufactured, and it can be supported by the teams that designed them in the first place. However, these systems are usually thousands of miles away, and maintenance needs to take place wherever they are at the time using the available resources.

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. The visual instructions give full confidence to the user that they are performing the task as per the process set out by the manufacturer. And these visual based guides remove the complication of understanding the instructions where English is not their 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. 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 & maintenance procedures, but how do you implement it?

To create an accurate, up-to-date AR experience for maintainers, you need a real-time, accurate flow of data from CAD design right through to the critical service content - A Digital Thread.

In the A&D space, more and more projects are mandating that service content is compliant with the ASD S1000D standard. This means that all supporting information for systems such as seats, landing systems, and engines need to be S1000D compliant to provide a common standard across the industry for content sharing.

In many organisations, engineering, service, and parts information is stored and managed on multiple systems . This means that the quality and integrity of the S1000D service content is compromised and any AR experiences created from it may be impaired.

To address this, 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 and S1000D for PTC Windchill ensures the correct content is being used to generate these AR maintenance tasks.

By having these connected systems, you are enabling the Digital Thread to ensure efficient and reliable processes supporting your AR experiences.

The results are simple but 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 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 through-life are reduced.
  

Want to understand more about using your S1000D content to support AR? Come join us at the S1000D User Forum from October 14th- 17th.

You can read more about S1000D for PTC Windchill here or get in touch with our team to talk through your S1000D requirements.