Augmented reality for tissue converting maintenance

Tissue converting lines represent one of the key plants in the paper production field: thanks to them, paper tissue is converted into its final form for domestic and sanitary usage. One of the critical points of the tissue converting lines is the productivity and the possibility to follow the conversion process at a relatively low cost. Although the actual lines have high productivity yet, the study of state of the art has shown that choke-points still exist, caused by inadequate automation. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of a project which aims at removing such obstacles towards complete automation, by introducing a set of innovations based on ICT solutions applied to advanced automation. In detail, advanced computer vision and video analytics methods will be applied to monitor converting lines pervasively and to extract automatically process information to self-regulate either specific machine and global parameters. Augmented reality interfaces are being designed and developed to support converting line monitoring and maintenance, both ordinary and extraordinary. An Artificial Intelligence module provides suggestions and instructions to the operators in order to guarantee the production level even in the case of unskilled staff. The automation of such processes will improve factory safety, decrease manual interventions, and, thus, will increase production line up-time and efficiency.