A mixed reality interface for digital twin based crane

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Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Date

2020-12-14

Department

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Master's Programme in Mechanical Engineering (MEC)

Language

en

Pages

90

Series

Abstract

With digitalization transforming manufacturing, we have been witnessing the “Industry 4.0” revolution, which is featured by “digital twin”, the digital representations of the physical assets, processes or systems. The motivation of this thesis comes from tackling the challenges of designing a human-machine interface (HMI) for complex digital twin systems carrying with an increasing amount of data. As a case study, the work targets on prototyping and evaluating a proof-of-concept HMI leveraging state-of-the-art mixed reality (MR) technologies to enhance the operation of a digital twin based smart crane. In this application context, the work firstly determines the hardware and software setup, then implements and evaluates the prototype - an MR application consisting of visualization, interaction, communication and registration modules. Those modules enable the application to function as a bridge of the bi-directional information exchange between the crane’s digital twin platform (through the crane GraphQL server) and the user (through the HoloLens interface). In one direction, crane data is handled and displayed in a virtual dashboard in front of the users’ view for monitoring; In the other direction, users can navigate the crane by interacting with holograms via either fixed or movable target control method, with great flexibility and mobility ensured by spatial tracking and registration. The prototype is then quantitatively evaluated regarding the accuracy of both control methods, with the testing data well visualized through error ellipsoids, which indicates the fixed target control method excels the movable one by lower variance. With wrapping up the work, six concrete research topics for further development of the MR application are proposed and elaborated.

Description

Supervisor

Tammi, Kari

Thesis advisor

Autiosalo, Juuso
Salminen, Pauli

Keywords

mixed reality, digital twin, HoloLens, smart crane, human-machine interface, industrial communication

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