Empowering Aircraft Maintenance with Wearable Computing : An Industrial Case Study

In this paper we present a concept for a combination of wearable computing and knowledge management with the goal to shorten the maintenance process in the aircraft industry. This research is part of an ongoing project which is carried out in cooperation with an aircraft company. This paper describes the functions of the wearable devices as well as the conceptual realization. While the purpose of the project is to create a fully functional wearable system, this paper focuses on the following topics: (a) the use case and requirements as well as non-technical issues, (b) the additional aircraft infrastructure including a localization system, (c) the wearable computing hardware based on a commercial PDA with a custom input device, (d) an adaptive user interface for alternative usage of the PDA in handheld mode and wearable mode, and (e) a knowledge management system to store and navigate the aircraft’s product model and to organize experience knowledge.

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