ABSTRACT
The manufacturing industry is faced with increasing product diversification due to changing customer needs and market demands, which is putting stress on operators. This necessitates solutions for on-the-job training and support. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies and digital work instructions already show great potential, but in order to speed up their entry into the market, research is needed to empirically demonstrate their added value, personalize training solutions to individual operators’ needs so that each operator receives the right amount of cognitive support, lower the costs of content creation, and expand their application to a wider range of use cases. Starting from current solutions in augmented and virtual reality that train and support operators on the job during assembly tasks, COSMO will research, design, develop, and evaluate data-driven methods with a view to making immersive technologies that deliver cognitive support in assembly environments more personalized and scalable (hence marketable). To tackle this objective, the project brings together industry partners active in immersive training on the assembly workfloor (Cronos – Rhinox, Azumuta, and Mariasteen) with manufacturing companies (CNH Industrial, Mariasteen, and Atlas Copco) and research partners active in the domains of instructional psychology and educational data analysis (itec, imec research group at KU Leuven), stress sensing (imec-CHS and imec-IDlab), computer vision technology (imec-IPI), VR (Howest), and flexible assembly innovation with machine learning (Flanders Make). In addition, Flemish schools active in technical, vocational, and special education will pilot and implement the technologies in their curricula.