INSPIRATION
The physical and cognitive augmentation of humans forms another major industry 4.0 trend. The limitations in humans are being augmented with the help of technologies such as wearables and exoskeletons. Further, industrial mobile devices, natural and intuitive UI, and portable machine control
screens enhance the ease of using such technology. XR technologies like mixed reality (MR), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) are already in use in Industry 4.0 from the research and development (R&D) to full-scale production and post-production processes. This multi-experience paradigm is changing the way industrial manufacturing systems function. The nature of human-machine interaction is aligning more toward machine-enabled workers.
ULS Robotics is a Chinese startup developing an exoskeleton technology platform. Many workers on the shopfloor encounter fatigue, weakness, and other physical discomforts due to the repetitive and monotonous nature of their tasks.
The use of exoskeletons on the shop floor helps workers in doing their tasks efficiently while reducing or eliminating any physical strain. Exoskeletons usually provide support for the waist, upper limb (with 4 degrees of freedom), and lower limb (with 12 degrees of freedom).
The US-based startup VirtuFab develops an enterprise-level VR tool aiming to assist manufacturing and fabrication teams for product design and pre-visualization processes. Product design requires tight collaboration among team members and extends to multidisciplinary team coordination. The use of VR for this process enables direct location-agnostic access to the designs. Virtufab offers a virtual customizable tool belt that enables remote collaboration capabilities.
