and some people from Ford and
various other companies the very
next day.”
From PTC’s point of view, at the
heart of the project was the need
to transfer the expertise, skills and
intellectual property of the assembly
“We knew the
challenge was on an
augmented reality
footing: i.e. what can
AR do to accelerate the
scalability challenge that
was being faced by
lines at Smith and Penlon into a
number of new facilities , something.
This was achieved using AR.
Says Paul Haimes: “Well, we
knew the challenge was on an
augmented reality footing: i.e. what
can AR do to accelerate the scalability
challenge that was being faced by the
engineering companies. The decision
had already been taken. We will use
an existing pre-approved design
in the case of the Penland paraPAC
and then the the ESO 2 ventilator and
we would we would be using AR to
capture what was being done in the
Smiths and Penland factories and
then process that information.”
This meant taking
the best practice from
the individuals on the
shop oor about how
to assemble and most
importantly, how to
test these pieces of
equipment. PTC’s role was
to package that information
up and then deliver it as an
augmented reality experience
to the new assembly technicians
– people at Ford who had been
assembling car components the
previous day!
Says Haimes: : “Those people
were now going to be assembling
ventilators and it was going to be
using our our AR experience. That
was the tuition that they would
receive.”
He continues: “The build takes
over 24 hours and we captured
all of the different stages through
our Vuforia Expert Capture (VEC)
software and a worker wearing
Microsoft HoloLens glasses. From
there, we upload to Azure Cloud
and edit it is so that a manufacturing
professional - with no prior
experience of building a ventilator –
can successfully be guided through
the process. All they have to do is put
on a pair of HoloLens glasses, or view
a smart device like a tablet or phone,
and follow the instructions. We have
even put annotations over the footage
to help with troubleshooting any
potential issues.”
In addition to its value as a
teaching tool, AR also ful lled another
key role in the project; namely,
keeping people safe while working
on it. Protecting all the workers
involved in the project is of paramount
importance to the consortium.
the engineering
companies”
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