Real-time assistance to manual assembly through depth camera and visual feedback

Abstract The current fourth industrial revolution significantly impacts on production processes. The personalized production paradigm enables customers to order unique products. The operators assemble an enormous component variety adapting their process from product to product with limited learning opportunities. Digital technologies are increasingly adopted in production processes to improve performance and quality. Considering this framework, this research proposes a hardware/software architecture to assist in real-time operators involved in manual assembly processes. A depth camera captures human motions in relation with the workstation environment whereas a visual feedback guides the operator through consecutive assembly tasks. An industrial case study validates the architecture.