Head-mounted displays for the safety check and preparation for service of industrial trucks

Status:

completed 01/2017

Aims:

A safety check must be performed when industrial trucks are prepared for service. The check is documented by checklists, which are normally carried by the employees on a clipboard. The check covers all externally apparent sources of hazard, such as insufficient tyre pressure, fluid leaks, etc. The checklists used for this purpose are not generally available in digital form, and the OSH professional and maintenance personnel may learn of the faults belatedly. Head-mounted displays (HMDs, smart glasses) present an innovative solution to this problem. An HMD app is to reproduce the checklist digitally and communicate the results of the check to the relevant personnel, ideally in real time. Communication is to be possible in both directions between the parties involved. Hazards presented by faults identified on the vehicle are thus to be eliminated in time.

Activities/Methods:

Following observations in the field and analysis of the analogue checklists, the context and content of task execution were set out in concrete terms. The resulting findings were implemented during programming of the app (for Android) and transferred to a format suitable for use on a head mounted display (easily legible view for small displays, control by voice commands).

Results:

An analogue safety check for industrial trucks was digitalized by means of an app capable of running on head mounted displays. The core functions of the application are documentation of possible faults and forwarding of the results of the safety check to the responsible group of persons (OSH professional etc.) in real time. A particular feature of the app is its ability to run on head mounted displays as well as tablets and smartphones. The sensors of the head mounted display permit object recognition on the vehicle concerned. A hierarchy of items to be checked, specific to the vehicle, is called up and displayed to the user. As soon as a fault is detected, it can be documented by means of the head mounted display's camera function and/or a text message. Functions such as image analysis, photography, real-time data transfer and reading/writing of data from/to a server were implemented for this purpose. A desktop application is used in order to record data in a database. This application offers functions both for communication with the database and for the display of data. Each documentation record bears a time and user stamp. The documentation requirement is thus met particularly rigorously. The description of the project and the app were made available to the BGHW.

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