MUNICH & WOLFSBURG: Today’s vehicles like the XL1 are
characterised by continually growing complexity. This means that service
employees will need more extensive support in servicing new vehicles and their
innovative functions.
The XL1 is a technological frontrunner – not only in its
lightweight design, aerodynamics and state-of-the-art drive technology, but in
the service area as well. The MARTA project is being presented at the InsideAR
Conference, the world’s largest Augmented Reality conference in Munich on the
11th of October 2013 by Prof. Werner Schreiber, Head of Volkswagen Group
Research.
The working methods and sequences of work steps used by
employees of Volkswagen Service in their everyday work are highly dependent
upon a vehicle’s equipment and features. To make it easier to manage this
growing complexity, employees must be efficiently supported in their work
activities. This requires advanced development of the classic repair
instructions which show the employee how to perform the tasks of the specific
job, step by step, with relevant supplemental information such as the tools to
be used, assembly configurations and test specifications.
To achieve these goals, Volkswagen developed a new display
system for service information, especially for the XL1, which also provides the
information on tablets and shows the service employee the next work steps
directly. What is known as the MARTA (Mobile Augmented Reality Technical
Assistance) system, which was developed together with the company Metaio GmbH, shows
real and virtual parts in three-dimensional relation to one another.
Using the previous approach, the service technician could
only call up digital repair guidelines. For the XL1, these guidelines were
supplemented by the MARTA augmented reality function which “labels” the
individual parts and elements with text and shows work instructions clearly.
When MARTA is called up, the system lists all of the jobs to
be performed along with the necessary equipment. Each work task to be performed
begins with what is known as an initialisation. The vehicle’s silhouette is
shown in the display of the mobile end device, and it shows the employee the
orientation to be taken in relation to the vehicle. If the silhouette and the
camera image of the real vehicle agree, the initialisation is finished
successfully. Then the individual context-dependent work steps are shown on the
tablet. This gives the employee a new system for identifying work items quicker
and more accurately.
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