Audi Testing Futuristic Gesture-Based Virtual Assembly Analysis
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Back when Henry Ford was still fiddling with the assembly line, getting parts onto a car as fast as possible was the only goal. Men lined a pathway on which Model Ts would slither, and they’d wrangle their assigned component onto the budding vehicle as it passed by. Today, all-out speed is but one part of the equation, and a good chunk of the effort goes into finding ways to minimize strain on the part of the humans doing the assembly. Audi has revealed it is working on a futuristic new way of analyzing workers’ tasks before they ever perform them in real life using 3D projection and advanced gesture control.
The setup works like this: Using 3D projection—an existing tech used by Audi’s industrial engineers—and a special armband and goggles, engineers can manipulate vehicle components in virtual space, including attempting to “install” them on a broader 3D model. The idea is to get an advanced look at how different pieces come together before a real-life worker faces down the task using a real part. Think of it as gesture control like that in the new BMW 7-series, only instead of changing the audio volume or other simple tasks, it’s doing something far cooler.
So far, Audi’s clever test bed is still only that, but the company has revealed a few of the system’s basics. Besides 3D projection, there’s also an infrared Microsoft Kinect camera from an Xbox video-game console and a Bluetooth-linked Myo gesture-control gaming band, which can detect movements of the user’s arm and fingers. All of these bits feed information to a computer that makes heads and tails of it to provide realtime component manipulation. It’s very cool and very useful, given how in addition to being purely functional, some vehicle components are designed to also facilitate their own installation; detecting issues before a part is fully tooled saves development time and money. The future is here, or, at least, the future is a few months away, when Audi plans to begin using the new technology as part of its design process for real.
