MAESTRO
by Roberto Gagliardi and Olivia Catoni
The ACTS AC233
project, 'MAintEnance System based on Telepresence for Remote Operators'
(MAESTRO), aims at developing telepresence techniques for the maintenance,
installation and repairing of mechanical and electromechanical machinery.
The MAESTRO solution is intended for the training of complex maintenance/
installation scenarios for remote users, such as SMEs that cannot afford
on-site complex training equipment.
The technology developed in the MAESTRO project will enable users to
train themselves in maintenance tasks by connecting their (PC-sized) workstations
to the Virtual Showroom, where they can inspect complex machinery as well
as perform training on maintenance procedures. Deployed technologies are:
high-speed networks, video-based telepresence and augmented reality.
The market penetration of complex machinery heavily depends on the capability
of producers to provide adequate, continuous support, practical training
and product maintenance. In particular, the costs of the practical training
and maintenance, which are proportional to the geographic distances between
producers and customers, represent a relevant percentage of the global
cost. Due to these costs (human resources, trips, communications, shipments
etc.) European SMEs often cannot afford to pay for adequate maintenance
and training services for their customers. The MAESTRO solution is expected
to reduce the above costs by replacing in-house demonstration/training/maintenance
procedures with remote ones.
The project addresses the requirements of European industrial manufacturers
producing hi-tech, complex machinery. They need to provide customers with
technical services for market support, such as machine repair and/or maintenance.
The project goals are targeted primarily at those SMEs whose plants, agencies
or customers are located in distant geographical sites or countries.
The showroom is made of an extended prototype of the equipment to be
maintained (ie, the target equipment), which is customized to allow extensive
diagnostics, and a robotic arm holding a video camera. The user is connected
to the showroom through an ISDN and/or ATM link. He/she drives the robotic
arm by interacting with a low-cost, ergonomic 6 Degree of Freedom joystick,
which is produced within the project. The real images of the target equipment
are shipped to the user's workstation. The virtual 3D model of the target
equipment is superimposed on the real-time video. A marking technique based
on LED's is used for this purpose. Multimedia information describing assembling,
operating and/or maintenance procedures are associated with 3D representations
of the target equipment or parts of it. Speech recognition tools are used
to enter commands by voice. This solution is particularly suitable as it
enables the user to have hands-free information access.
In order to support intensive multimedia applications combining voice,
real-time video and images, network Quality of Service (QoS) techniques
are required. The IP-over-ATM and the RSVP (Reservation Protocol) technology
are used for this. Since ATM is not yet available at the pilot's site,
the integration of ISDN and ATM is currently under consideration. The adoption
of emerging standards for multimedia document transmission, in particular
MPEG4, is also planned. The project began in September 1996 and will terminate
in August 1999.
Please contact:
Roberto Gagliardi - CNUCE-CNR
Tel: +39 50 593259
E-mail: r.gagliardi@cnuce.cnr.it
Olivia Catoni - Consorzio Pisa Ricerche
Tel: +39 50 972341
E-mail: o.catoni@cpr.it
