Applying an AR lens to maintenance

MAN Energy Solutions completed the first installation of a ground-breaking solution, MAN TechGuide, that combines augmented reality (AR) with a product instruction and maintenance system.

MAN ES expects the intuitive documentation solution to help to improve speed of maintenance and troubleshooting and indirectly to improve the availability of customers’ vessels.

The solution is an example of MAN’s digitalisation efforts and builds on MAN’s work developing virtual reality training packages since 2018. It also offers wider Internet of Things (IoT) efficiency benefits, by automatically updating vessel maintenance records, and connecting with a ship operator’s wider inventory management system.

The first installation was completed aboard a bulk carrier, Berge K2, operated by Singapore-based dry bulk specialist Berge Bulk in Q4 2019. The solution required the installation of a WiFi connection in the engine room.

TechGuide

The solution uses a headset (or smartphone or tablet) to automatically recognise products and individual components. The system then pulls the relevant content from its database of product and component instructions to deliver the relevant maintenance instructions quickly.

“The product acts like a semi-intelligent instruction manual,” Peter Dan Petersen said, easing the process of identifying a component or product and accessing the right technical documentation.

Once an individual component is automatically identified, the digital solution offers crew members a range of choices. Products can be examined in an exploded component-level view, or an X-ray view of a product can be projected over the part in question.

The advantages of such a digital solution include compressed preparation time as the part and associated instructions can be identified more quickly.

Crewmembers can opt to receive instructions according to the engineer’s personal preference, including instructional videos, overlaid step-by-step animations, audio instructions, or by text instructions. These multimedia maintenance options can be accessed via an AR headset or a smartphone or tablet.

Once engineers become accustomed to receiving instructions via a Hololens while performing maintenance tasks, maintenance tasks should be performed more quickly and with fewer distractions, according to MAN.

“It might require a change of behaviour but the solution is designed to be intuitive to use. Many of the younger generation of engineers are familiar with accessing instructions on their personal smartphones or tablets,” Peter Dan Petersen said.

The application itself is interactive and can be controlled by voice commands, or by hand gestures.

“The solution is currently only available in English, but we plan to extend the choice of languages to cover the main language groups, such as Ukrainian, Chinese and others,” Peter Dan Pedersen noted.

As a next step, the company is also developing the functionality to extend the range of actions from maintenance to cover troubleshooting of failures or anomalies.

Maintenance system efficiencies

The TechGuide also offers integration with individual shipowners’ fleet maintenance and management system.

The engineer is able to click on a spare part and access stock availability data from the ship operator’s inventory system. MAN has completed integration work with a number of different inventory management systems, such as Sertica, but can add others according to demand.

The system automatically registers the original MAN PrimeServ parts used in the job and completes the job on the system, reducing the administrative burden on crew members to manually register every part used or job undertaken. This is also expected to improve the accuracy of record-keeping over time.