The application of augmented reality technologies for the improvement of occupational safety in an industrial environment

Abstract

In many branches of industry, occupational safety experts identified two main causes of worker injuries related to the usage of modern electro-mechanical machines and systems: inadequate training and insufficient work experience, and monotonicity of the tasks often performed repeatedly. In this paper, we present a system based on augmented reality (AR) technologies that can be useful in reducing these factors of risk at work and decreasing the error rate and preventing injuries. The system that is implemented on mobile devices is intended to project augmented reality instructions directly at the work place. A worker is led by the AR-system step by step through various work and safety procedures that should be performed. Each procedure consists of steps specified by a series of instructions accessed through an interactive check list. To ensure the safeness, if a confirmation is missing because of a skipped, incompletely, or wrongly performed step of a procedure, the AR-system blocks further implementation of the procedure and returns the worker to the previous step until the correct actions are carried out. At the same time, interactive work with the checklist breaks the monotonicity of the job. The system is personalized according to skills of a worker by taking into account his professional training and work experience. Depending on that it is determined the amount of data to be displayed to a worker helping even less skilled workers to perform a task. As a case study, the proposed approach is implemented as an instructional and occupational safety system for work at a universal lathe, which is an element of many technological processes of Thermal Power Plant Ugljevik in the Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where this AR-system was experimentally implemented and verified.