Visiting a nuclear power plant: remote QC, space interaction, and the industrial metaverse begins to take root.

Text/VR Gyro Yuanqiao

When digitalization, networking, and intelligence are the characteristics of the fourth industrial revolution, most factories have begun to realize a thorny problem—the operating model of traditional factories is in urgent need of change.

Factories such as nuclear power plants, PetroChina, Sinopec, State Grid, and China Shipbuilding Industry are the vanguard of my country's Manufacturing 2025. They are also a series of resource-intensive and technology-intensive central enterprises. Since they are all giants in various industries, they represent the trend of China's high-end manufacturing industry to a certain extent.

On the road to exploring the industrial metaverse, their minds are the first to be open, and their understanding of technology is sometimes better than that of their partners. As Xiang Wenjie, co-founder of Hangzhou Lingban Technology, said, when communicating with these factories, it is found that the management has a strong understanding of new technologies, and the application layout of industrial AR technology is much higher than expected.

In order to better understand the development of the domestic industrial metaverse, VR Gyro was invited to participate in the "liberation work of the person in charge of the oil-stained work of China General Nuclear Power Group Fujian Ningde Nuclear Power Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Ningde Nuclear Power) on October 11. "Hands" - Intelligent Maintenance Scenario License Authorization Ceremony, on-site interviews with Ningde Nuclear Power Maintenance Deputy Chief Engineer and Instrument and Control Department Manager Pan Feng, Deputy Chief Engineer of the Instrument and Control Department Li Jian, maintenance worker Rong Fei, and Hangzhou Lingban Technology (Rokid) United Founder Xiang Wenjie.

"Liberating the oil-stained hands of the person in charge" - Remote QC witness scene

From management to technology to the front line, understand the innovative applications of digital transformation of nuclear power plants from multiple dimensions, and use nuclear power plants as a spear to peek into the development process of the domestic industrial metaverse.

Changing Cognition: The First Step in the Development of the Nuclear Power Plant Industrial Metaverse

For nuclear power plants, if they want to break the traditional management model and embark on digital transformation, the first big obstacle they face is "liberating the mind." How to get employees to accept new tools? Let the industry recognize this? In fact, there are great challenges. If the ideological problems can be resolved, many problems will be solved easily, said Li Jian, deputy director of the Instrument and Control Department of Ningde Nuclear Power Plant.

It is true that a change of mind is the first step to accept new things, which is why the widely talked about impact of this year's Vision Pro release is that the public's awareness of AR/VR has further improved, and it has taken a big step towards consumer applications. . On the industrial side, it is more difficult to really open your mind. The industrial side is not like the consumer side market. Many news have the opportunity to be passively understood.

Most employees working in factories usually have fixed working patterns. Working in a fixed pattern for a long time makes them less likely to accept new changes. Just as Jobs once talked about a record metaphor when he was nearly 30 years old, he believed that "people are stuck in inherent forms, like a fixed groove in a record, and they can never get out. Of course some people are born with it. Have strong curiosity and always have a child-like heart. Unfortunately, such people are too rare."

Therefore, if you want to improve the awareness of industrial employees, what is needed is practical "ease of use". Only when you truly feel how convenient the tool is for your work will it be easier to accept it. Just as Rong Fei, a maintenance worker at Ningde Nuclear Power Plant, said that his biggest feeling after using the Hangzhou Lingban Technology Industrial AR Smart Helmet X-Craft is that his work efficiency has significantly improved.

Rongfei further said, "In the previous maintenance work, the measured data needed to be recorded into the program, and then the report was manually generated, which took 2-3 days. Now it can be uploaded in real time. Generate reports. Each step is recorded, which also ensures the authenticity of the data chain. More importantly, in QC testing, if you encounter problems, you can contact experts in real time, saving time waiting for experts to arrive on site."

Remote QC witness

While the front-line operators really felt that it was useful, Ningde Nuclear Power further carried out the intelligent maintenance scene license authorization ceremony so that employees could also feel the sense of accomplishment brought by their work. This is also one of the aspects of this intelligent maintenance scene license authorization ceremony. original intention. It is worth mentioning that Ningde Nuclear Power employees need authorization to use new tools before they can actually use them, and the number of the first batch of licenses also has a certain value and sense of honor in the long run.

Intelligent maintenance scene license authorization ceremony site (first from left: Rongfei)

At the scene, we saw that the front-line operators had no difficulty in using the tools as expected. Almost newcomers could start operating them directly. We also lamented the success of Hangzhou Lingban Technology in hardware and software design, but this is only a promotion. The first step in the development of the industrial metaverse, Pan Feng, manager of the instrumentation and control department of Ningde Nuclear Power Plant, also summarized three other challenges in the digital transformation of nuclear power plants:

"First, infrastructure construction. Many plant areas in nuclear power plants do not have networks. In order to promote digital transformation, networks are essential. However, if you want to deploy networks in nuclear power plant areas, there are certain challenges in local deployment. In To ensure that there is no connection to the external network and avoid system signal interference, the data between various systems needs to be connected."

"The second is process and institutional management. If intelligent maintenance work only transforms the original work procedures into electronic ones, then the value of digital transformation has not been truly reflected. Only by truly simplifying the work process, can we Digitalization can truly improve efficiency. Therefore, for the digital transformation of nuclear power plants, the management transformation of processes and systems is also very important."

"The third is to open up the system. At present, many systems are isolated, and the data has not been connected. Under such conditions, it is difficult to summarize the data in different systems, and the data cannot Play a real role. How to truly open up the system and let the data play a real role is also a huge task to be solved."

It can be said that the current development of the industrial metaverse is ushering in a new starting point for large-scale promotion. The exploration of Ningde Nuclear Power and Hangzhou Lingban Technology has created new vitality in the industrial digital transformation and brought valuable reference to the industry.

Increase productivity: find the best way to free "greasy hands"

Economist Thomas Woods likes to test students with a simple thought: What would our economy look like if all machines and tools ceased to exist? Cars, tractors, saws, etc., what would it be like if these tools really disappeared and all of our consumer goods had to be hunted, grown, and made with our own hands?

It is conceivable that such living conditions will be very difficult. Tools have changed everything and made humans the top of the biological chain. Looking back at the operation mode of nuclear power plants, the same is true. There are approximately more than 20 departments in the Ningde Nuclear Power Base, among which overhaul is an important application scenario and is also a labor-intensive scenario.

In the overhaul scenario, the person in charge of the work needs to follow a very cumbersome procedure manual during the maintenance process. Each time, he needs to get a pile of paper packets, sometimes as long as more than 50 pages. After each step is completed, you need to take off your gloves, record them in a notebook, and then put on your gloves again to continue the inspection, repeating this process. If the mechanical equipment is particularly oily, the work efficiency will often be slower in order to avoid the oil contaminating the records.

If technology can be used here to improve productivity and free front-line employees from simple and repetitive work, they will have time to do other things. This is also a focus of the digital transformation of nuclear power plants, Li Jian said. Initially, Ningde Nuclear Power also tried many other methods, such as using mobile phones and iPads to record, but the underlying interaction method did not change.

In this regard, Xiang Wenjie, co-founder of Hangzhou Lingban Technology (Rokid), said that the core of industrial AR is the change in interaction methods. The concept of spatial interaction methods is not limited to the nuclear power plant scene. All industrial scenes are actually the same. . From traditional paper and pen to mobile phones and Pads, and then to spatial computing, complex work can truly be simplified.

Xiang Wenjie also summarized the three stages of the development of industrial production interaction methods: "The first stage is the traditional paper-and-pencil method. This method has a high probability of incorrect detection, missed detection, and re-inspection, and is inefficient. The error rate is also high; the second stage is the era of mobile phones and Pads. This method simply transforms traditional records into electronic records, and the hands of the staff are still not truly freed. The arrival of the spatial interaction method in the third stage truly achieves Free your hands."

Similar to Darwin’s point of view, that is, natural selection has given birth to species with stronger vitality, and industrial AR technology has given birth to more efficient production methods and more powerful operating models.

Hangzhou Lingban Technology Industrial AR Smart Helmet Writing reports can be done in real time.

"Take remote QC as an example. In the past, experts went to on-site QC to witness, and under efficient conditions, they could witness 2-3 in a morning; but now some simple tasks do not require traveling to and from the workshop, and 5-6 can be witnessed in a morning. This can double work efficiency and reduce a lot of unnecessary work," Li Jian said.

“In addition to reducing the burden of work, another important point is to “increase quality.” After all, work quality is also the life of the industrial line. Precisely because the smart AR helmet can realize voice interaction, the person in charge of the work can focus on his work itself and focus on improving the quality of work. If he encounters some minor problems, he can directly use the helmet to solve them online. The original work model required the person in charge to constantly withdraw from work and then enter work again, which increased the degree of distraction and negatively affected the quality of work to a certain extent. "Pan Feng said.

Freeing "greasy hands" means implementing applications into scenarios based on reality, so that we can extend the original scenarios and continuously expand the application scenarios of industrial AR. We are also eager to see the solutions proposed for the digital transformation of domestic leading factories to drive more manufacturing factories to achieve data-driven production and move towards digital intensification.

Dare to think and dare to try: break through from 0 to 1, and then change repeatedly from 1 to N

At the Intelligent Maintenance Scenario License Authorization Ceremony, Tian Huiyu, Secretary of the Ningde Nuclear Power Party Committee, said something impressive: “If the nuclear power industry can achieve digital transformation, then all industries in China can use this as a reference to realize their own digitalization. ”

When we understand the operation mode of nuclear power plants, we can intuitively feel the meaning behind Tian Huiyu’s words. Nuclear power plants not only have extremely high safety requirements, but also involve more than 300,000 different types of equipment at the production site. The operation and management of each equipment are very difficult. Corresponding application scenarios must be built for different equipment, and the construction process is also very complicated.

Pan Feng said, “For research and development, it is difficult to go from 0 to 1, but for our applications, it is easy to make a DEMO version from 0 to 1. The most difficult thing is to go from 1 to N and promote it on a large scale. problem. Once we have 1, we must start to lay the groundwork for more work and solve different problems in order to expand the application scenarios."

2022 is called the first year of digital transformation by Ningde Nuclear Power. In fact, Ningde Nuclear Power started digital exploration with Hangzhou Lingban Technology as early as 2021. At that time, the project team and R&D team of Hangzhou Lingban Technology were basically involved. Ningde Nuclear Power Base. During the interview, Li Jian laughed and said that apart from the fact that they do not receive wages from nuclear power plants, they are essentially the same as employees of nuclear power plants.

It is precisely because of this persistence that we have seen a big step forward in the domestic industrial metaverse. As Xiang Wenjie said, this "liberating the greasy hands of the person in charge" - the smart maintenance scene license authorization ceremony was held, which means that industrial AR applications have taken another step forward, marking the beginning of the application of AR technology to the entire industry. With in-depth exploration of the chain, the value of the industrial metaverse has also begun to radiate to the front end; and after it is used, more and more companies are willing to learn about it. When more companies are willing to learn, the case of Ningde Nuclear Power It will bring about the next breakthrough.

If nuclear power plants can apply industrial AR smart helmets very well, there will be experience for other industries to learn from or can be copied directly.

Live experience of Hangzhou Lingban Technology’s new spatial computing product: Rokid AR Studio

Data is the most important new production factor in today's era. Only by opening up the entire chain of data collection, analysis, and decision-making in R&D, manufacturing, and operations can we truly achieve digitalization. At present, the cooperation between Ningde Nuclear Power and Hangzhou Lingban Technology is deepening, focusing on the AR technology of Hangzhou Lingban Technology to promote the digital transformation of Ningde Nuclear Power further.

From digital transformation to smart industry, from hands-on practice to external output, Ningde Nuclear Power will bring its experience and wisdom of digital transformation to broader fields and more diverse application scenarios.

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