Using Wearable and Contextual Computing to Optimize Field Engineering Work Practices

Industrial work, as performed in field engineering and manufacturing, is inherently different from traditional office work. Industrial work is highly mobile and physical, and involves continuous interaction between people and machines in settings such as factory floors, power plants, oilrigs, locomotive maintenance yards, etc. This domain has recently benefitted from a set of disruptive technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) [2], mobile and wearable computing, and contextual software applications. In particular, GE’s Industrial Internet initiative aims at researching new ways to connect people and machines, enabling communications between people and traditional software systems, between people at work, and between people and intelligent machines. When allied with wearable and mobile computing, the Industrial Internet enables new forms of contextual user experiences focusing on the delivery of the right information to the right user at the right time and place. Moreover, these new technologies have enabled experiences that better adapts to industrial workers’ needs. For example, using virtual reality glasses and natural language interaction, workers can readily access information about their tasks at hand, the machines nearby, and people located at a distance. This is achieved with minimal distraction, in a proactive way, leveraging the knowledge about each person’s tasks and surroundings. In this paper, we describe a general approach and architecture designed to support contextual and mobile applications in the industrial domain and the application of this architecture in the development of the MyWorld application, a contextual mobile applications that works as a single point of entry for a field engineer’s needs.