Augmented reality
for maintenance,
repair and inspection
After the successful demonstrator of the augmented reality goggles in training AFIKLM E&M and NLR have developed a vision of the future use of AR by maintenance personnel. Since November 2018 this is turned into an official joint venture NUVEON.
NUVEON wants to integrate augmented reality throughout the MRO chain and to use it in the everyday performance of maintenance”. If you integrate AR in this way, it will become common practice and you can increase the insight of mechanics, supervise them remotely and make recordings that are usable as progress training. But the real challenge is to organize things differently and to make it more interactive, because that is the only way to leverage the full added value of AR. It’s not enough to simply use a new technology and leave everything else as it was.
Besides the demonstrator for KLM, Nuveon has developed a vision of the future use of AR by maintenance personnel. “We want to integrate AR throughout the MRO chain and to use it in the everyday performance of maintenance”. “For example, using augmented reality for every repair could help ensure the correct procedural steps by visually projecting the action that must be performed on the aircraft. At the same time, information could be given during inspections about previous repairs of the aircraft. If you integrate AR in this way, it will become common practice and you can increase the insight of mechanics, supervise them remotely and make recordings that are usable as progress training. But the real challenge is to organize MRO operations differently and to make it more interactive, because that is the only way to leverage the full added value of HoloLens. It’s not enough simply to use a new technology and leave everything else as it was.”
Consideration is being given to using AR as performance support in carrying out tasks on a real aircraft during a mechanic’s normal work. Instructions about the actions required will be projected visually on to the aircraft. Combinations with other AR/VR devices are looked into, as well as remote access through MCC etc. New developments with the new versions of the goggles will be taken into our developments.
Nuveon is a collaboration between KLM and NLR.