Seen Through the Eye of the User: Live Remote Maintenance Using Smart Glasses

KASTO Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG (Achern, Germany) offers the innovative VisualAssistance system for maintaining their sawing machines and storage systems remotely: By means of a tablet, smartphone or smart glasses, users can send live videos to service experts and receive visual assistance and information in real-time in the event of a fault or maintenance work, reducing downtime and costs to a minimum. KASTO has a legacy of fitting sawing machines and storage systems with a remote maintenance facility. As an option, service engineers can connect to the systems online to rectify faults or optimize processes, meaning a time-consuming site visit is no longer necessary in many cases. VisualAssistance significantly expands this service spectrum: The heart of the system is an interactive app for tablets, smartphones or smart glasses that customers can use to connect to service staff through video and audio streams. Users and engineers share the same field of view in real-time, which immensely simplifies mutual understanding and helps to quickly identify individual system components and possible faults.

The app also enables the service experts to provide visual assistance and to superimpose markings, for example, on the live video. The user receives all necessary information directly on their display by means of augmented reality while they are carrying out maintenance or repair work on the saw or storage system on-site. If they use smart glasses, their hands are also free to make their job even easier. Service engineers have a virtual presence on-site and guide staff accordingly. Extensive training and expensive site visits are therefore superfluous. At the same time, users benefit from minimal downtimes as well as high availability and productivity of their machines and systems.

KASTO, Inc., 3002 Venture Court, Export, PA 15632-8949, 724-325-5600, www.kasto.com.