How AR/VR drives automation and robotics manufacturing

This article explores how AR/VR technologies can power robots and how they can benefit factories and industries.

The business environment has changed significantly in 2022 due to the continued spread of the COVID-19 epidemic and the emergence of challenges such as supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and inflation. The impact of these issues has forced many businesses and manufacturing executives to consider adopting automation and robotics to improve their production, distribution and fulfillment facilities. This transformation is not only to improve production efficiency and reduce costs, but also to cope with the impact of unstable factors on business operations. By introducing advanced technologies, businesses can better respond to current challenges, improve competitiveness, and provide greater competitive pressure for

businesses facing ongoing economic challenges and continued pressure from business investors. As a result, they need to look for ways to improve the efficiency of their factory operations and product development teams to address these challenges.

Of course, many manufacturing plants still rely heavily on human labor. However, an increasing number of locations are now implementing automation and robotics powered by augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and reduce human touchpoints to ease the pain of staffing challenges .

Increase investment in automation

The Advanced Automation Association claims that demand for robots in U.S. workplaces increased by 40% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2021. This growth A record high.

Automation-driven robots are widely used in the automotive industry, such as assembly line production. In recent years, industries such as aerospace, retail, food production, construction equipment, and pharmaceuticals have also begun adopting these robotic technologies in factories, making significant progress.

Improving productivity and reducing costs have a clear positive impact on a company's revenue. Beyond that, however, these technologies are helping to enforce social distancing policies put in place during the early days of the pandemic.

Increase the flexibility of production facilities

The COVID-19 outbreak has highlighted the need for greater flexibility in companies where they can take advantage of advanced technology and automation. At the same time, the ability to quickly scale up or down to meet project deadlines without disrupting shift work further helps increase productivity.

Technologies such as AR/VR technology and automation-driven robots have significantly improved the efficiency of the entire factory, which is especially important in the current situation where supply chain and logistics demands are more stringent.

Do twice the result with half the effort

As we enter 2022, continued disruption to global supply chains increasingly becomes the new normal, and manufacturers continue to respond to cascading events in different ways. For example, improving supply chain visibility and improving customer satisfaction are important. 59% said improving supply chain visibility is their most important business priority in 2022, while 45% selected improving customer satisfaction. Better automation-driven technologies are paving the way for these improvements.

Cloud-Based Automation Technology Proving Crucial

AR/VR is necessary in today’s automation and robotics, but there are some important things to consider when leveraging this technology for manufacturing applications areas need to be understood. The technology allows designers and manufacturers to conduct real-time 3D visualization and CAD design and manufacturing; faster training cycles; professionals can work at a higher level. Some manufacturers report that using AR/VR minimizes errors through command overlays, remote assistance, and better planning and visualization. In some cases, this has increased productivity by more than 40%. AR/VR technology saves a lot of time in the manufacturing and construction process by optimizing the decision-making process, which has a positive impact on the entire OODA cycle (observe, locate, decide, act).

Immersive Mixed Reality’s Need for 3D and Artificial Intelligence

One of the key requirements for mixed reality applications is the precise overlay on an object of its model or digital twin. He provides assembly and training work instructions and helps track manufacturing errors and defects. Users can also track objects and adjust renderings as the work progresses.

Object tracking systems on most devices use 2D images and marker-based tracking, which severely limits the accuracy of 3D coverage because 2D tracking cannot estimate depth and therefore scale and pose with high accuracy. This means that even if the user can get a good-looking match from one angle and position, the overlay will lose alignment when the user moves in six degrees of freedom (6DOF). Furthermore, in most cases object detection, recognition and estimation of its scale and orientation (called object registration) are achieved computationally or using simple computer vision methods with standard training libraries (e.g. Google MediaPipe, VisionLib), which is important for regular and/or smaller and simpler objects such as hands, faces, cups, tables, chairs, wheels, regular geometric structures, etc. all work well. However, in enterprise use cases, labeled training data (especially in 3D) is not readily available for large, complex objects, which makes using 2D image-based tracking to align, cover, and persistently track objects and blend rendering in 3D Modeling becomes difficult (if not impossible).

The Right Platform Technology for Automation

One thing equipment managers must consider is that not all automation technologies are created equal. It's important to pay close attention to your technology infrastructure and choose a cloud-enabled platform so that your project can truly scale when needed. Manufacturers are overcoming their growth constraints by leveraging cloud-based (or remote server-based) AR/VR platforms powered by distributed cloud architecture and 3D vision-based artificial intelligence. These cloud platforms deliver the performance and scalability needed to drive industry innovation at speed and scale.

Using robotics and AR/VR driven automation technology requires the right speed and data accuracy. Although technologies such as AR/VR have been used for several years, many manufacturers have deployed virtual solutions based on live environments, with all data stored locally.

Existing AR/VR infrastructure limits the speed and scalability required for current virtual designs. It limits the ability to share knowledge between organizations, which is critical when designing new products and understanding the best ways to build virtually.

Today’s manufacturers are overcoming these limitations by leveraging cloud-based (or remote server-based) AR/VR platforms powered by distributed cloud architecture and 3D vision-based artificial intelligence. These cloud platforms deliver the performance and scalability needed to drive industry innovation at speed and scale.

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