Mixed-reality techniques to support a new type of service business in industrial operation and maintenance

Traditionally, industrial facilities such as process plants have been maintained by the plant owner's organisation. As the plants have become more complex and the demands of production performance have become higher, the outsourcing of plant maintenance activities and combining them to performance consulting has become attractive, thus opening a new market for industrial services. This has resulted in major changes in the work and responsibilities of the maintenance engineer. The change has in turn set new demands for software products and opened new software business opportunities. VTT has international state-of-the-art expertise in industrial software architectures, Augmented Reality, video stream processing and human-technology interaction. Using this expertise, we have developed a novel concept for providing each stakeholder intuitive access to the right information in the very location on the plant floor where that information is needed. The concept involves video-stream based user interfaces, mobile devices and location-aware information services.