A novel maintenance system for equipment serviceability improvement

Maintenance is crucial in prolonging the serviceability and life span of equipment. As manufacturing facilities become more complex, it is often beyond the skills of an individual to perform a completely satisfactory task. This paper presents a novel real-time equipment maintenance system incorporating augmented reality (AR) for context-aware overlay of textual and graphical maintenance instructions on the maintenance scene. The system provides an online communication interface for remote maintenance between equipment experts/vendors and maintenance personnel. Service and maintenance knowledge and experiences can be accumulated through authoring AR-based contents on-site. The proposed system can improve maintenance workflow and enhance equipment serviceability.