title: Cognitive Learning, Monitoring and Assistance of Industrial Workflows Using Egocentric Sensor Networks.
abstract: Today, the workflows that are involved in industrial assembly and production activities are becoming increasingly complex. To efficiently and safely perform these workflows is demanding on the workers, in particular when it comes to infrequent or repetitive tasks. This burden on the workers can be eased by introducing smart assistance systems. This article presents a scalable concept and an integrated system demonstrator designed for this purpose. The basic idea is to learn workflows from observing multiple expert operators and then transfer the learnt workflow models to novice users. Being entirely learning-based, the proposed system can be applied to various tasks and domains. The above idea has been realized in a prototype, which combines components pushing the state of the art of hardware and software designed with interoperability in mind. The emphasis of this article is on the algorithms developed for the prototype: 1) fusion of inertial and visual sensor information from an on-body sensor network (BSN) to robustly track the user's pose in magnetically polluted environments; 2) learning-based computer vision algorithms to map the workspace, localize the sensor with respect to the workspace and capture objects, even as they are carried; 3) domain-independent and robust workflow recovery and monitoring algorithms based on spatiotemporal pairwise relations deduced from object and user movement with respect to the scene; and 4) context-sensitive augmented reality (AR) user feedback using a head-mounted display (HMD). A distinguishing key feature of the developed algorithms is that they all operate solely on data from the on-body sensor network and that no external instrumentation is needed. The feasibility of the chosen approach for the complete action-perception-feedback loop is demonstrated on three increasingly complex datasets representing manual industrial tasks. These limited size datasets indicate and highlight the potential of the chosen technology as a combined entity as well as point out limitations of the system.
authors.affiliation: Department Augmented Vision, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Kaiserslautern, Germany; Department of Computer Science, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bleser
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Dima
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Damen
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK; Department of Computing, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK.
authors.forename: Ardhendu
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Behera
authors.affiliation: Department Sensor Informatics, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Linköping, Sweden; Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Gustaf
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hendeby
authors.affiliation: SmartFactory KL e.V., Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Katharina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mura
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miezal
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gee
authors.affiliation: Department Augmented Vision, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Nils
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Petersen
authors.affiliation: Department Computer Vision, Interaction and Graphics, Center for Computer Graphics, Guimarães, Portugal.
authors.forename: Gustavo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Maçães
authors.affiliation: Department Computer Vision, Interaction and Graphics, Center for Computer Graphics, Guimarães, Portugal.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Domingues
authors.affiliation: SmartFactory KL e.V., Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Dominic
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gorecky
authors.affiliation: Department Computer Vision, Interaction and Graphics, Center for Computer Graphics, Guimarães, Portugal.
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Almeida
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Walterio
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Mayol-Cuevas
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Calway
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Anthony G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Cohn
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Hogg
authors.affiliation: Department Augmented Vision, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Didier
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stricker
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D007858:Learning; D016272:Occupational Health; D009787:Occupational Medicine; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D057188:Workflow