As part of its activities, Planet GmbH supplies database-supported product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions for planners, designers and plant engineers as well as for operators of process engineering and process technology plants. The solutions cover all aspects related to industrial plants from planning, delivery and construction to structured document management and project handling in maintenance and dismantling.

1.

Challenge Introduction

Creation of a solution for interactive maintenance, in particular for 3D laser scanning of rooms, evaluation of image data, detection and evaluation of structural changes and interactive information exchange and connection to existing planning systems.

2.

Challenge Details

The challenge aims to create a software solution for interactive maintenance. For this, it is first necessary to capture individual, very different rooms as a 3D laser scan. The 3D laser acquisition must also be feasible under difficult conditions (e.g. poor WLAN / LTE connections, strong magnetic fields, strong shielding, or explosive areas). The goal is to create a surface model of the individual rooms, facilities and their components via 3D laser acquisition. After the model has been created, this and, if necessary, additional image material is to be analyzed using AI and the data prepared for transfer to a CAD system (AutoCAD). The most important goals here are the detection of pipe runs, separation of the components installed in them, the detection of structural changes and anomalies between two scanning / evaluation runs.
This information and analysis will be used in the two following application areas and will enable interactive maintenance:

– Maintenance tour with mobile graphical representation of the model => Augmented Reality supported recognition of a component, display of the respective TAG number on the individual components and manual recording of condition information on the component.
– Maintenance work with mobile graphical representation of the model => Augmented Reality supported recognition of a component and display of the respective TAG numbers on the individual components as well as display of the required metadata and documents for this component. Simple display and simulation support by the 3D model during assembly or disassembly of components.

Finally, the solution created is to be connected to the existing PLM solutions of Planet GmbH via APIs. The aim here is to support the areas of maintenance & installation, conversions in existing buildings, planning discussions and target/actual comparisons, which can be handled via Planet’s PLM system.